Maugerville, New Brunswick

Maugerville /ˈmeɪdʒərvɪl/ is a New Brunswick unincorporated community located on the east bank of the Saint John River in Maugerville Parish, Sunbury County, in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The settlement is located on provincial Route 105, 16 kilometers southeast of the capital city of Fredericton and 3.18 kilometers northeast of the town of Oromocto.

Early Settlement History

Maugerville was the first English settlement established on the Saint John River subsequent to the British taking control of the area from the French, following the fall of Quebec in 1759. The story of its establishment demonstrates how colonial officials in Halifax, Nova Scotia, clandestinely dispossessed the Wəlastəkwiyik (Maliseet) indigenous peoples from their territorial lands without their knowledge, in violation of earlier Indian-British Treaties and the Royal Proclamations of 1761 and 1763.

In pre-contact northeastern North America the Wəlastəkwiyik indigenous peoples, as their name implies, were the people of the Wəlastəkw (Saint John River) from its mouth to its sources. The area now occupied by the current community of Maugerville was originally a hunting territory of the Wəlastəkwiyik, with the closest native settlement being at Sitansisk just above present day Fredericton, the pre-1759 site of the French settlement of St. Anne’s. However, early British maps of the area, in the spirit of English dispossession, failed to illustrate the ancient presence of the Wəlastəkwiyik on the River, including the settlement at Sitansisk and their down-river hunting territories. In a series of Peace and Friendship Treaties between representatives of the Wəlastəkwiyik and British colonial officials in Nova Scotia, between 1725 and 1760, the Wəlastəkwiyik had agreed that they would “respect English settlements lawfully to be made.” However, the Treaties contained no provision to cede Indian territory to the British. The ownership of Wəlastəkwiyik lands was further protected under the terms of the Royal Proclamations of 1761 and 1763, issued by King George III. These Proclamations specifically forbade provincial administrators, including the governor of Nova Scotia, from granting Indigenous lands to British settlers without due process, a procedure that involved the explicit permission of both Indigenous peoples and the British Crown. The vision behind the Proclamations was concern by the British Crown that “settlers could not be trusted to treat Indigenous peoples justly.”

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