New England Planters in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, 1759-1800: Bibliography of Primary Sources

Eric L. Swanick is the New Brunswick Legislative librarian and the
author of Hardiness, Perseverance and Faith: New Brunswick Library
History.

Since its establishment in the early 1980s, Acadia University’s
Planter Studies Centre has been very active, convening and publishing
the proceedings of two Planter conferences. The centre is to be
complimented for establishing bibliographical priorities. Its first
bibliography, by Daniel Goodwin, was entitled A Checklist of Secondary
Sources for Planter Studies (1987). And now Judith Norton has authored
this second bibliography.

Between 1760 and 1775, well over 8000 English-speaking immigrants came
to Nova Scotia (New Brunswick separated from Nova Scotia in 1784). The
immigrants left an extensive paper trail, and this bibliography cites
these records, each of which is briefly and accurately annotated. The
bibliography includes Planter material in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia
repositories for the period 1759 to 1800. Material was included only if
it (i) related to the actual immigration and settlement process; (ii)
named one or more individuals identified as a New England Planter; and
(iii) provided information on some aspects of development in Planter
township.

The publications are grouped into five categories: government
documents, personal papers, business records, documents of a society,
and newspapers. The volume concludes with no fewer than five indexes, an
approach that only complicates matters for the user. The subject index,
the last of the five, is totally unusable (as many as 70 page numbers
are cited after some entries). The repository abbreviations should have
followed the standard form.

Despite these flaws, the volume is generally well organized, precisely
and accurately annotated, and typographically attractive.