BOOK TRACES THE EARLY HISTORY OF MANY LOCAL FAMILIES

By BARB RAYNER

Courier Staff

Published in the Tuesday, December 9, 2003 edition of the Saint Croix Courier

Posted by permission of the author and the Saint Croix Courier

Cal Craig and his wife Barb of Bonny River are pictured with a copy of his newly published book "Early Families of The Mackadavy" which includes a collection of histories of families from the local area

Picture courtesy of Barb Rayner

 

BONNY RIVER - It’s taken about six years of research but Calvin Craig’s 500-page Early Families of The Mackadavy is now complete and is filled with information about some of the early settlers in the area.

The book includes a collection of brief family histories covering the period up to the 1861 census and a bit beyond. The book is based on the local early settlers who were primarily from the US Revolutionary War - United Empire Loyalists 1783/84. Names of the settlers have been compiled from early land petitions and grant maps along with other details including some from the 1851 and 1861 census.

Craig, who lives in Bonny River in a log home built on a piece of the actual land grant to his ancestor John Craig, said six years is probably actually a conservative estimate of the time he has spent on the book.

“I have been interested in genealogy for many years and started out with encouragement from by uncle Alyson Craig who got me started on it. We were living in Yarmouth at the time. Alyson and his wife Isabel visited and he got me started on it. He had quite an interest in it - more so than anybody else in the family.”

He qualified as a certified genealogist in 1986 and was editor of the Nova Scotia Genealogist from 1987 to 1989. In 1985 Craig compiled his first unpublished book The Young Emigrants: Craigs of the Magaguadavic for the first Craig family reunion held in St. George, Blacks Harbour and Pennfield.

“I just did that in loose leaf for the family. I am currently revising that to make it into publishable format.”

That reunion brought 200 people to the area from five different provinces and 15 states. A second Craig family reunion was held ten years later in 1995.

Craig began researching and collecting material for Early Families of the Mackadavy in the 1990s. Mackadavy is the nickname old settlers used to describe the Magaguadavic as it was difficult name to spell and to pronounce. The name Magaguadavic, according to the Maliseet/Micmac/Passamaquoddy native dialect, meant River of Eels.

The river flows north to south in southwestern New Brunswick primarily following a course roughly parallel to the Saint John, St. Croix and Penobscot rivers. In fact, it was once a focal point in the early international boundary discussions. Some Americans wanted the Magaguadavic to be the border and the British first thought it should be the Penobscot then advocated finally, with success, for the Schoodic (St. Croix)

The book is a labour of love and culminates many years of work on local history based on over 500 land grantees along the Magaguadavic River and other events since the American Revolutionary War.

Craig is a descendant of Private John Craig of the 84^th Regiment (Royal Highland Emigrants) who came to this area when the regiment disbanded. The 1797 John Craig land grant, which is brushed on the east by the water of the Magaguadavic and on the west by the Bonny River and Dawson Mountain, has been home continuously to Craig descendants for over 200 years.

 

“Six or more years ago I decided it would be good to have a written history of the Magaguadavic Valley. The name Mackadavy has historic significance because it had been nicknamed that and that is why I named the book that way.

“Since then, with the help of many, many others, we have put together a local history of the Magaguadavic Valley - St. George, Bonny River, Second Falls, Lee Settlement and Piskehegan.

“My research was Craig and my mother’s family who were descended from Daniel Lee. I researched those two chapters. The 36 other chapters are the genealogy of local families. They were compiled by local people and some in the US and western Canada and submitted to me and I brought them into the same format as the other chapters and produced the book. Sixty people have assisted with the book and I really appreciate all they have done.”

The person who played a very large part in the production of the book was his wife, Barbara (Linton) Craig originally from Bayswater, New Brunswick who typed a lot the material. The couple met and married in 1959. Together they became a team.

The research has taken the couple to Halifax, Windsor, Charlottetown, Moncton, Saint John, Fredericton, St. Andrews, St. George, Boston and even Cowpens and Monck’s Corner in South Carolina.

“Documents have been the primary source of information and I have also had to rely on secondary sources. As a result of all this, the book has been developed. It is not perfect. It does not cover every family as far as we would like - only about the first three or four generations up to the late 1800s.

“I have not attempted to correlate or blend each genealogical data. I have left them as they came to me. There are bound to be discrepancies in dates of birth and death and middle names. The book is fully indexed and each family chapter for the most part has a separate index.”

Included in the early part of the book are the names of approximately 500 grantees who received land up and down the river from the top of the parish down to the ocean and to the Letang River. All these names are listed from the north boundary of the parish of St. George, south to Passamaquoddy Bay. First listed are those on the west side of the Magaguadavic River followed by those on the east side

“I have done it geographically so you can tell who was the neighbour of who. That is a lot of land grants. That includes up to Piskehegan and Kedron Brook and it mentions the blockhouse at Piskehegan.

“I would like to get people interested in their history and proud of their heritage because there has never been anything written. Little bits have been written but this is the first time it has all been put under one cover and it will form a basis for people who want to carry on their own genealogy from that.

“There are other families that I have listed we wish we could have done and there are many more that are not listed. If someone wants to pick up the ball and carry on I would certainly be willing to help but I had to stop somewhere. We had reached 500 pages.

“It is reference material. It will never be a best seller that’s for sure but it contains a lot of dates and historical events, information on the progress of the area, legislation and grants.”