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.