Glassville, New Brunswick, in Aberdeen Parish, Carleton County (click HERE to view on Google Maps), along with the surrounding communities, came into being largely due to the efforts of Rev. Charles Gordon Glass, a Presbyterian minister from Aberdeen, Scotland during the late 1850s – early 1860s. A tract of 10,000 acres was set apart for the Glassville settlement with the expectation that one hundred families of Presbyterians from Scotland would occupy one hundred acres each. (At the same time, similar settlement schemes promoted by Roman Catholic Bishop John Sweeney, and by Rev. Charles Knowles of the Free Will Baptist Church, gave rise to Johnville and Knowlesville, respectively.)
The first arrivals to form the pioneers of this new thriving settlement were the McIntosh, Joyner and Bisset families. Reverend Glass went to Scotland to further his settlement idea. More than 130 emigrants left the port of Greenock, Scotland on May 9, 1861 on board the barque “Irvine”, destined for the new settlement of Glassville. On June 27, 1861, they arrived at the Partridge Island quarantine station in Saint John Harbour. Later that summer they travelled to Glassville to join the community already becoming established, and as time went by, additional families joined the first settlers. The settlement grew quickly and had a post office from 1861 and by 1871 was the centre of five communities with a population of 200. By 1898, in addition to a post office, Glassville had six stores, a hotel, a Presbyterian church and a population of about 300.
- Read about the founding of Glassville and its early days in contemporaneous reports
- School Class Lists
- Settlement Maps
- Local Postmasters
- Research and other links