Town of St. George - 225 - St. George, NB - Community Commemoration on Waymarking.com

St. George Town History

It started in 1783, when a group of United Empire Loyalists, led by Peter Clinch, emigrated from the United States and ended up climbing the steep bank fi–om the lower Magaguadavic River at the foot of what is now Clinch Street. (You can find the exact spot, marked by a commemorative sign.) Mr. Clinch received a grant for the land that was to become St. George in 1784, and two years later he served as a member of the House of Assembly in Saint John.

Another distinguished resident of St George who was a member of the House of Assembly was Colonel Hugh McKay. He served for 30 years, in addition to being a senior justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and at his death in 1848 he was the only full colonel of the militia in New Brunswick.

The new town grew rapidly to such an extent that by the mid-1800s five shipyards, ten sawmills and seven granite mills were operating in and around St George.

Growth and prominence brought their own problems, and the town had to build its first fortifications — Fort Vernon on the south side of the basin, in 1812, and Fort Hill, near what is now the town center, on a site still called Fort Hill, in 1866. The cannons from this fort can still be seen, ‘guarding’ the –front doors of the St George Legion Hall.

The town’s first church — the oldest Presbyterian Church in continuous use in Canada — was built in 1790, and the town’s growth Can be charted in the churches that followed: the first Anglican church in 1821 (torn down and rebuilt in 1907: destroyed by fire in 2002 and rebuilt over the following years), The first Baptist church in 1845, and the first Roman Catholic church in 1854.

St. George ‘came of age’ with incorporation in 1904.

The role of granite in the town’s history cannot be overstated. You can still see evidence of the stone throughout the town, from the water trough at the Town pump, built in 1902, in front of the granite post &lice on Main Street, to the old Presbyterian manse on Campbell Hill, to the quarries that dot and haunt the woods around the town, to monuments in the town’s cemeteries.

The Lake Utopia Medallion, housed in the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, is a large, circular piece of granite, obviously shaped and engineered by an expert stone cutter: that bears the head of an Indian chief believed to have been a friend of the explorer Pierre de Mont The Medallion was not discovered until 1862, but is thought to have been cut by a member of the DeMont-Champlain expedition of 1604.

The cost of production brought an end to the granite industry through the ‘forties and ‘fifties, and the last company closed in 1953, marking the end of the industry that lives on in the town’s nickname, the Granite Town. The decline of the granite industry turned the St. George Pulp and Paper Company. In operation from the start of the century and the town’s first source of power, into the community’s biggest employer until it closed in the late sixties.

Mining for tungsten and molybdenum — provided a relatively brief economic boost to the region through the ‘eighties, and as mining declined, aquaculture began its rise as the town’s preeminent industry, St George, then, is a blend of old and new.
From the Town of St. George

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