Description of Historic Place

This site is a municipal park, located south of Main Street in Salisbury, bounded on the east by McNaughton Brook and on the south by Petitcodiac River. Within this natural site are recreational amenities and remnants of the Parkin family cemetery, including a fence and monuments.

Heritage Value

This site commemorates the largest Acadian village on the Petitcodiac River in 1758, the former Jaques Tavern, the Parkin family cemetery and the birthplace of Sir George Parkin.

The Victor Beausoleil Broussard Village site is recognized because of events that occurred here during the Seven Years War (1756-1763). Prior to the beginning of the Deportation of the Acadians in 1755, the families along the Petitcodiac River were mostly located south of Turtle Creek (Riverview) and the Bend (Moncton). When Major George Scott completed the forceful removal of French families from the Petitcodiac River in 1758, the remaining Acadians had mostly moved farther upriver, beyond the Bend. A map of the Scott expedition shows a large settlement on the north side of Petitcodiac River at Beausoleil Village, settled in 1735, (present day Allison). Brothers Joseph and Alexandre Broussard (dit Beausoleil) lived here at this time. The two brothers had numerous children, including 14 sons. The 1758 Scott map shows the largest village on the Petitcodiac at the time, west of Beausoleil Village, as “Victuare Village”. The village was named “Victuare” on the Scott map for Joseph’s son Victor Grégoire (dit Beausoleil) Broussard. This “Victuare Village” (present day Salisbury), represented by ten homestead dots on the map, was settled by the French circa 1751. This site was also a winter camping area for the Mi’kmaq. The exact location and limits of “Victuare Village” are difficult to determine precisely. It would probably extend from McNaughton Brook to beyond River Road and from the Petitcodiac to beyond Main Street in Salisbury.

The Victor Beausoleil Broussard Village is also recognized as the site of the Jaques (or Jacques) family farm and tavern. John Jaques was the son of Yorkshiremen Joseph Jaques, who had a land grant in Little River. The Jaques family, having left England in 1774, was amongst the first English settlers in the Salisbury area. The John Jaques Tavern was opened in 1809 as a lodging place for traveling officials, since there was no other place between Dorchester and Sussex.

The Victor Beausoleil Broussard Village is also recognized as the site of the John Parkin family farm and cemetery. John Parkin was born in 1795, in Yorkshire district England and resided in Little River for 19 years before moving to Salisbury with his family in his early forties. Several members of the Parkin family are buried in the family plot cemetery. The daughter of Sir George Parkin, Mary Erskine (Parkin) Grant was buried there as recently as 1962.

The Victor Beausoleil Broussard Village is also recognized as the birthplace of Sir George Parkin. The youngest of the family of thirteen, George Robert Parkin, born in 1846, became a well-known scholar. George Parkin was the principal of the prestigious Collegiate School in Fredericton in 1872. In 1895, he became principal of the Upper Canada College in Toronto and in 1902 he went to London England to become the first secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship Trust, a position he held until his death in 1922. In 1920, Sir George Parkin was officially knighted by King George VI. Alice, Sir George Parkin’s daughter, married Vincent Massey, the country’s first Canadian-born Governor-General. Michael Ignatieff, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (May 2, 2009 - present) is a great grandson of Sir George Parkin.

Source: Salisbury Village Office, Local Historic Places file #1

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements that relate to the former Victor Beausoleil Broussard Village include:
- natural landscape of sloping hills;
- potential archaeological remnants relating to the various events and occupations of the former village;
- Parkin family cemetery, including a galvanized steel fence and stone monuments.