Documents New Brunswick Parish Boundaries in the pre-1861 census years Quantitative data relevant to the early history of New Brunswick are scarce. Grain-bounty returns, probated wills and inventories, and church records hold promise as sources of data for work on the pre-confederation period, but these records are fragmentary, their use is difficult, and they have yet to be exploited systematically. 1 Undoubtedly, the provincial censuses taken in 1824, 1834, 1840 and 1851 are the most accessible and complete numerical records available for the province in the first half of the nineteenth century. 2 However, these data are not immediately useful for the study of spatial patterns. As the population of the province increased, and the settled area expanded, old parishes were divided, new ones were created, and exist- ing boundaries were altered. Thus the number of parishes increased from 34 in 1784 to 80 in 1834 and 100 in 1851, 3 and at each census, statistics were collected according to the current pattern of this changing mesh. But few nineteenth-century maps of the province are reliable indicators of the parish lines; those that exist rarely show the boundaries as they were in a census year. The developing network of parish boundaries can be traced through the succession of provincial statutes by which the boundaries were erected, changed and confirmed. The best guide to this plethora of legislation is part V of 13 Vict., c. 51 (1850), An Act to consolidate all the Laws now in force for the division of the Province into Counties, Towns and Parishes, and the details need not be repeated here. Much of this material was usefully sum- marized by W. F. Ganong in his ". . . Monograph of the Evolution of the Boundaries of. . . New Brunswick", 4 but his treatment of boundary changes is on a chronological, county-by-county basis, and the wealth of information the work contains is only systematized in maps for 1786, 1836, and 1901. 1 In lieu of detailed census information, such records might prove fruitful for studies of agriculture, the economic composition of society, and the demographic characteristics of the early New Brunswick population. For an introduction and summary of potential see Gary B. Nash, Class and Society in Early America (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1970). 2 Journal of the House of Assembly of New Brunswick [JLA/NB], 1825, Appendix; JLA/NB, 1835, Appendix; JLA/NB, 1841, Appendix; JLA/NB, 1852, Appendix. 3 Total for 1834 includes City of Saint John and District of Carleton but no other districts within parishes; total for 1851 includes City of Saint John. 4 Royal Society of Canada, Proceedings and Transactions, Ilnd Series, 7 (1901), pp. 139-449.