Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick (PANB): www.archives.gnb.ca is located in Fredericton. Within their holdings are governmental and private records. They also house maps and photographs. For records on microfilm, PANB participates in the inter-library loan system.

The PANB website has a “Research Tools” section. Here you will find well written county guides. These guides recount history of the county and the record groups generated. They provide the PANB reference numbers and the dates covered within a particular record of collection being featured. Some records featured are ones commonly used by genealogists, such as land and probate. Others may be more difficult to access such as school and church registers, so knowing they are at the PANB can save you a lot of time trying to track them down on the locally. These guides are highly recommended.

An important database under “Research Tools” is “Guide to Family Histories.” The database indexes the names in books, files or on microfilm. The full reference can range from a couple of lines to many pages. Both printed and microfilmed collections are featured. Among these are the Family Histories Collection (MC1), the New Brunswick Publications Collection (MC80), Private Records (MC/s), and family histories in the Vertical Files at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John. This is only an index, with the reference to the source, not scanned images of the source itself. Other databases such as this one are also in the “Research Tools” section.

Large collections of records from PANB are on microfilm at the Family History Library (FHL): www.familysearch.org It is wise to check both of their cataloged so you can develop a good research strategy in your research. Remember the FHL also has records and periodicals not copied from the PANB.