46 TRANSACTIONS. 1 897-8. 



Whatever the origin of this early county place-name, it is 

 certain that population increased and with it the desire to 

 have a larger Colonial establishment. In 1784 New Bruns- 

 wick was erected into a separate province and Thomas Carle- 

 ton was appointed its first Governor. Thousands of United 

 Empire Loyalists had found their way to the Maritime Pro- 

 vinces and thousands more began the great work of colonizing 

 the littoral of the St. lyawrence from Lake St. Francis to 

 Lake Ontario ; the shores of Lake Ontario as far as the Bay 

 of Quinte ; the neighborhood of Niagara and part of the 

 shores of the Detroit River. They were finding homes in the 

 ports of Shelburne, Halifax, Guysboro. They were penetra 

 ting into the valleys of the Annapolis and the Cornwallis and 

 the Avon. They were pouring into the St. John River region, 

 in great numbers. Organized government must go with 

 them. It was in those days felt to be a difficult, if not an im- 

 possible, task to manage from Halifax the affairs of the people 

 in such distant regions as Burton and Gagetown. So Thomas 

 Carleton was sent to do the work. 



No doubt he and his Council studied the subject care- 

 fully. The first work they had to do was to divide the pro- 

 vince into counties. They found on the map the counties 

 of Cumberland and Sunbury — too large and unwieldy for pur- 

 poses of home rule. Accordingly they began to subdivide 

 and to name the subdivisions. Cumberland belonged about 

 equally to both provinces. But the newer yielded gracefully 

 and abandoned Cumberland as a place-name to Nova Scotia. 

 They did the next best thing. Looking on the map of Eng- 

 land — the motherland for whom so many had sacrificed every- 

 thing, home and ease and wealth and friends — they saw that 

 Cumberland was adjoined by Westmoreland and Northumber- 

 land. What better names than these could be suggested? 

 Surely none. So these two were adopted. The monarchic 

 principle found expression in the place-names of Kings County 

 and Queens, lying side by side. In St. John they preserved 

 in its English form the old name given by De Monts in 1604. 

 In Charlotte County (after Queen Charlotte) there is an exhibi- 

 tion of that strong personal love for the sovereign which 

 characterized the men and women of that period. Sunbury, 

 shorn of its giant dimensions, was retained as the sole memor- 

 ial of the province's former connection with the sister pro- 

 vince of Nova Scotia. 



The new names and boundaries of the counties were 

 authorized by Royal letters patent in May, 1785. 



