First Level Assessment- Land use History of the Anagance River

not apply at all to its forests. During the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars from 80 to 90 percent of all masts supplied to the Royal Navy came from Canada, mostly New Brunswick (Williams 1992). The Napoleonic blockade of the Baltic forced England to expand New Brunswick’s lumber production twentyfold, transforming an “undeveloped backwater” of 25,000 people to a bustling colony of 190,000 (Gordon 2014). Pines could still be found in 1850, but few of the magnificent trees the region was known for earlier in the century remained.  Spruce was more abundant, but the largest had also been cut.  Though there were not many extensive cutover tracts, by 1850 the character and composition of the forests in New Brunswick had been drastically modified over the course of just 50 years of harvesting.

The effects of this early economic activity were not limited to just the forests. By 1820 importation of food into New Brunswick was the rule rather than the exception, everything hinged on the timber trade, though there were warning signs of the danger of single source economy (DeMerchant 1983).   James Robb, professor of Natural Science at Kings College in Fredericton (now the University of New Brunswick), was appointed Secretary of the Provincial Board of Agriculture when it was established in 1858.  He warned that timber harvesting was so lucrative that it distorted development, and that when the market in Europe declined, the farmer neglecting his homestead to work in the woods would be “surprised to find his fences down, his fields grown up with bushes, and both himself and his snug little clearing generally all gone bad”.  It was not just agriculture that was falling short of its potential.  In the years that shipbuilding boomed at St. John and other towns along the coast, even the fishing industry was neglected as men were drawn to the forest to supply wood (DeMerchant 1983).

During the winters, many men within the Anagance worked in the woods- not only cutting their firewood for the coming year, but to earn cash income (Elliot 1970). To take advantage of the culled mixed forests during this time, many milling operations sprung up and some communities that had begun as a farming settlements developed into lumbering communities. The first mill in Petitcodiac was a grist mill in 1820, built by Humphrey Hayward, that would later be followed by a carding mill and sawmill owned by the same man (Burrows 1984). It was built on the Anagance’s Hayward Brook and the settlement that grew around the mill, was named Hayward Settlement. The Jacknife Sawmill was in operation by 1833 in Petitcodiac, and a spool manufacturing plant by 1868.  Mills were often operated by water, most likely from the river itself or its tributaries. Other milling operations nearby in Petitcodiac included the Petitcodiac Lumber Company on the North River, and the Humphreys and Trites Mill on the mouth of the Anagance and North Rivers.

By 1860 the European and North American Railway linked Saint John and Moncton, running the length of the Anagance valley, through Petitcodiac Village (New Brunswick Railway Museum 2015), at the time known as Humphrey Corner (Village of Petitcodiac 2015).   Fuel for the engines was cordwood in three-to-four-foot lengths purchased from farmers along the line (Stronach 1969), the portion in the Anagance valley came from hardwoods growing to either side of the rail line (Elliot 1970). Farmers received “tokens” (redeemable for cash) for wood used by the railway company from piles placed along the track at designated locations.  Petitcodiac Village itself served as a hardwood fueling station, and a lumber shipping station that would have rivaled larger cities of the time (Burrows 1984).

At that point the age of wooden ships was beginning to wind down however, causing a reduction in the scale of the demand for timber exports both as wood and manufactured into ships. By the end of the Crimean war in 1856, virtually all of the ships in the British Royal Navy were already fitted with steam engines rendering masts irrelevant (Evans 2004), and the conversion to iron hulls began within a decade thereafter.  

A non-timber forest product on the Anagance, was tan bark (Elliot 1970). Hemlock trees were cut down, and the bark was stripped off and hauled to the tannery in Petitcodiac. Because the logs would not float, they were often instead put on brooks to make bridges or corduroy roads. Elliot (1970) also notes that maple trees were tapped for sap, with farmers producing syrup, sugar, and candy- though such opportunities were somewhat scattered. The low elevation and poor drainage of much of the watershed suggests that this was likely more often possible along the ridges (Valley Lowlands Ecoregion), than the valley bottom (Eastern Lowlands Ecoregion), as sugar maple prefers well drained soils (Ritchie 1996).