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Retrieval
Number: 0101/3 |
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Colonial
Legislatures passed Acts requiring local authorities to file population
returns from time to time, but routine detailed civil census taking
did not become established in the British North American colonies
in a comprehensive way until the 1850s. It is therefore unusual to
find documents that provide the researcher with a means to systematically
identify who resided in an area for dates prior to 1850. In the absence
of such “nominal” census in which heads of households
are named, local censuses such as this one are a “gold mine”
not only because of the information they provide for genealogical researchers,
but also because they allow scholars to assess the demographic and
social details of the settlement. This document however, poses some
challenges. The writer of the document provides a tally of people
in each category, but this sum does not equate with the numbers shown
when the columns are added up. There appear to be 56 people unaccounted
for in the surviving document, suggesting that there may be a page
missing. From what is provided in this document, we can see that the
population of Sackville, which in this case would consist of Sackville
Parish, totaled 566 people. By count this consisted of 124 men assumed
to be heads of households, and 110 women. There were 201 persons under
the age of 10 years and 131 persons over the age of 10. Each of these
categories are ambiguous. We might assume that the latter categories
distinguish “children”
under and over the age of 10, and that some of those in the category
of men and women were themselves grown-up children of male and female
heads of households, but there is no indication at what age one passes
from being regarded as a child and become an adult. Nevertheless,
in a crude way this document permits us to see household composition
and to identify the families forming the community at the start of
the 19th century. What is apparent is that more than a third of the
population was aged 10 years or younger while those who can be viewed
as older children formed just over 20 percent of the population. It
was then a community of young families. |
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| Setting
aside the 14 names that seem to be single individuals living on
their own, the remaining 99 households had an average of 6 inhabitants;
with the largest household consisting of 15 people, and several
comprised of 11 or 12 people. There is only one instance of what
might be presumed to be a widow left with a young family.
Moreover, given that adult males outnumbered adult females 134 to
121 it would seem that marriage partners were in short supply and
widows might expect to find new partners quickly. An analysis of
the surnames suggests that most families had relatives living in
the community and to this extent the web of kin-connections must
have been an important supportive system both in terms of family
relations but also for pooled labour and other economic activities.
These observations suggest that the Sackville settlement was one
displaying many of the classic attributes of a frontier “settler
society” entering the second generation at this location.
It consisted of a robust, healthy and no doubt prospering population
benefitting from an equality of opportunity to obtain an abundance
of land and thereby support a large family. Finally the census
takers, William Kay, James Smith and Benjamin Reid, suggest by
means of a brief notation to the document that they intend “to
add new families next time”
pointing perhaps to the arrival of newcomers in the Parish who were
not as yet settled. |
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This
project was made possible -in part or entirely - through the Canadian
Culture Online Program of Canadian Heritage, the National Archives of
Canada and the Canadian Council of Archives. |
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