The Settlement of the Lower Saint John River Valley, 1788.
Over the course of the next few months several thousands more refugees joined the original migrants. To accommodate demands for more responsive administration of the settlements, the British government in 1784 removed the Saint John River Valley and its contiguous territories from the control of Halifax and established the separate colony of New Brunswick. This map, adapted from military surveys, shows the lower valley between Saint John and Fredericton, a distance of about 128 kilometres. Most of the original Loyalist land grants and villages in the colony were within this region. The islands and the river intervals from the Long Reach northward and up the Kennebecasis (Kanabicasis) River were the best farmlands in the region and most of the newcomers who wished to farm moved to these regions. The lands around the Grand Bay and south to the Bay of Fundy were rugged and often infertile, and the countryside around the Bay itself was frequently fog-bound.
