Thanks to a $120,000 federal grant, the New Brunswick Provincial Archives website now contains an additional 65,000 provincial government documents, including the records from the New Brunswick legislative assembly from 1786 to 1833.
Provincial archivist Marion Beyea said digitizing and loading thousands of pages of original documents to the website will be a boon to history students, researchers, writers and New Brunswickers who want to trace their family roots.
"We'd love to see Atlantic Canada's early days better understood and more studied," Beyea said. "Anyone now can do comparative studies with these materials. Anyone interested in local history, the history of the community, can scan the indexes and find that."
The site includes a new photo gallery of early New Brunswick scenes, individual portraits and maps.
The government records also provide an understanding of provincial natural disasters. For instance, the Great Miramichi Fire of 1825 and an 1816 famine caused when volcanic activity disrupted weather patterns and destroyed crops.
The site is located at http://archives.gnb.ca.
