New Brunswick : Reports on Burying Grounds : 1908.

            James Hannay was born in Richibucto, New Brunswick, the son of Reverend James Hannay and his wife Jane Salter. His father was a Presbyterian clergyman who emigrated to New Brunswick in 1833 but returned to Scotland with his family in 1845. In the 1850s, the young Hannay came back to New Brunswick, finished his education at the Saint John Grammar School, and studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1867 and from that time until 1873 he was the official reporter for the Supreme Court. Over the next fifteen years, he worked as a reporter for several newspapers in New Brunswick, Quebec, and New York City, before returning to Saint John in 1893 to rejoin the Daily Telegraph, where he remained until the turn of the century. In spite of his long career in journalism, Hannay is best known for his historical writings, which popularized New Brunswick history at that time. His last major work, the two-volume, History of New Brunswick, was published one year before he died in 1909. Later nineteenth and twentieth century New Brunswick historians, Ganong and Raymond, would supersede Hannay with a more professional style of historical writing.
 As a result of his many years of research, Hannay became concerned with the unsafe and inadequate way New Brunswick's historical records were being stored. In 1906, the dominion archives appointed him to conduct a survey and report on public records in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Reports on the resources in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia, followed in 1909. The Reports are preserved in the National Archives of Canada. One year after he completed the History of New Brunswick, and submitted the Reports, James Hannay died on 12 January 1910 in Saint John, and his body was returned to Fredericton for burial.
            

            James Hannay, New Brunswick Reports on Burying Grounds, 1908, was received in installments and each has its own page numbering system. Thirty-four cemeteries were recorded in nine New Brunswick locations/areas, which include: Fredericton, Kingsclear, New Maryland, Kings County (Oak Point and Kingston), Oromocto, Hampstead, Lincoln, St. Andrews and Saint John. The Reports appear to be actual transcriptions of tombstones. In some cases, very few details of a person's life are recorded, perhaps only the name and date of death; but in many recordings, the date and place of both birth and death are given, as well as details of family relationships. In the case of a prominent individual or a person who held public office, additional information is included on the stone. James Hannay has supplied background information on each cemetery, and this precedes the start of the transcriptions. The information usually includes the geographical location of the cemetery and frequently the size, when it was first opened, and often a brief history of the settlement or church where it is located, including the founding families, which were usually Loyalist.            

            A table of contents arranged by location, which gives the page number for each cemetery, is found at the start of the reel and electronically; see Electronic Finding Aid section.

Some of the locations include an index, which is indicated in the finding aid.

Two Contents lists have been created by the author of the Loyalist Collection Inventory. One list is arranged in page order in the same manner as the cemeteries appear in the film.  The other list is a revision of the Table of Contents which appears at the beginning of the reel and which contains a number of inaccuracies and omissions.  Both lists are available in print with the Loyalist Collection Finding Aids and on the World Wide Web.