“Do not go where the path may
lead; go instead where this is
no path and leave a trail.”

Perhaps the most noticeable legacy of the Irish population in New Brunswick is the number of communities settled by them. As was common in the “new world”, Irish immigrants often used the names of their communities to remind them of their homeland. They also used them as an opportunity to make their mark on the new landscape, of which they had become an integral part, by commemorating names or events important to the new settlement.

The list of New Brunswick communities where the Irish played a significant role is a long one. Largely as a result of the efforts of Denis Noel, a member of the ICCANB, and employee of the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick (PANB), information on the Irish-related communities included on this site was culled from a much larger body of work that includes over 4,000 place names. This larger body of work has been developed into an impressive virtual exhibit by the PANB: Where is Home? New Brunswick Communities Past and Present.

Over the years the information included in this exhibit was gathered, researched and compiled into databases by a number of committed individuals including W.F. Ganong, scientist and historian, Alan Rayburn, William B. Hamilton, and Robert Fellows, a long-time employee of the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, as well as several other archivists who contributed supplementary research and materials.

For a complete understanding of the enormity of this effort please visit the Introduction to PANB’s comprehensive exhibit.

In this section we present the Irish-related subset of PANB’s information. The links from each community name will take you to the entry on the PANB site. In some cases only a brief description of the origins and location of the community will be included. In other cases, historical images of the community, county maps, and cadastral maps (including land grants) are also available.

Entries that have been submitted to the ICCANB as part of the development of this site, and are not part of the work of the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, contain the name and contact information (where available) of the person who submitted the information.

This project will be forever ongoing and we welcome contributions to augment the material found here.

There are two ways for the researchers to use this section:

Communities by County (click on title to enter)

For the convenience of researchers who may be aware of the county of origin of their ancestors, or pursuing other avenues of research within the counties of New Brunswick, this section provides the Irish-related community listings broken down by county, with a notation as to the ICCANB chapter responsible for that county. Also included are essays on individual communities or on the Irish in the county as a whole.

Alphabetical Listing of Communities (click on title to enter)

For additional information, you may find the section on Community Essays to be interesting and informative.