McDonalds on Miramichi Bay: people and places in the 2026 letters
Compiled 1 September 2026 from public place files and the 2026 correspondence about Julianne McDonald’s missing baptism.
The 2026 correspondence about Julianne McDonald’s missing baptism is set on the south shore of Miramichi Bay, Northumberland County, New Brunswick. Public place files make that shore a small, named map. Public family files make a different, famous MacDonald line at Bartibog. The letters’ Julianne line is still mostly what Richard MacDougall and Joe Brady wrote. This pass did not retrieve a baptism, a 1871 household schedule, or the Bayside deeds.
Public sources are linked in the notes. Claims that rest on the letters, and have not been checked against a register or image, are marked as stated by the writer.
The shore
Hardwicke Parish was cut from Glenelg in 1852. It faces Bay du Vin and Miramichi Bay. Its communities include Bay du Vin, Hardwicke, Auburnville, Escuminac, and Hortons Creek.
(Wikipedia: Hardwicke Parish)
Bay du Vin sits in that parish on cadastral map 62 — the map Brady asked about. In 1866 it was a fishing, farming, and lumbering settlement of about sixty families, fourteen of them Williston; in 1871 the population was 150
(GNB: Bay du Vin).
The provincial file and a place-name handbook treat the name as likely from French Baie de Vents (bay of winds), not “wine.” French settlers from Saint-Malo are said to have been there in 1672; the English burned the village in 1758
(Wikipedia: Bay du Vin).
Hardwicke village, on the same map 62, began as French Village (Muzeroll and Robichaud, 1760s), then Noble Settlement, then Hardwicke when the post office opened. The 1871 village population in the provincial file is 75
(GNB: Hardwicke).
Brady wrote that Julianne appears in the 1871 census for Hardwicke; this pass did not pull that schedule
(stated: Joe Brady, 24 Aug 2026).
St. Margarets is in Glenelg, not Hardwicke. The provincial file says the settlement included Upper Bay du Vin — farming, fishing, and lumber, about fifty families in 1866
(GNB: St. Margarets).
That is the old name Ken MacDonald said he learned for his mother’s area
(stated: Ken MacDonald, 31 Aug 2026).
GCatholic dates the Church of St. Margaret to 1861
(GCatholic: St. Margaret).
MacDougall put Sarah Shortall’s grave to the right of that church, fourth row, on Highway 11
(stated: Richard MacDougall, 31 Aug 2026).
Bartibog is across the water in Newcastle Parish, on the Bartibog River. Scottish settlers from 1812; in 1815 Alexander MacDonald built a Georgian house that is now a historic site
(GNB: Bartibog).
MacDougall wrote that in 1831 that church was likely the closest and reachable by boat
(stated: Richard MacDougall, 31 Aug 2026).
Bayside is the stretch between Chatham and Escuminac. Saint Michael’s By-the-Sea, a mission of the Chatham basilica, was blessed in autumn 1901
(Saint Michael’s By-the-Sea).
Ken wrote that he had just stopped there and that the headstone of William MacDonald and Elizabeth Flanagan (his great-grandparents) looked recently cleaned
(stated: Ken MacDonald, 31 Aug 2026).
The church postdates Julianne’s 1863 birth; the cemetery visit is a later-generation marker.
Chatham (now inside the city of Miramichi) is the large Catholic centre MacDougall named for a missing baptism. St. Michael’s Museum occupies the 1846 rectory and advertises a genealogical centre beside the basilica
(St. Michael’s Museum).
Richibouctou (Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue) is the Kent County parish Brady listed for Simon McDonald’s 5 November 1855 marriage. MacDougall pasted that parish’s history and warned the 1855 site may not match the present church
(stated: Richard MacDougall, 31 Aug 2026).
This pass did not retrieve the marriage act.
Two MacDonald clusters
MacDonalds are thick on this shore. Collapsing them is the error MacDougall is trying to avoid.
Alexander of Bartibog (the documented house).
A Miramichi Branch First Families file, naming Richard MacDougall among its researchers, gives Alexander MacDonald, born c.1762 Ardnamurchan, private in the 76th Foot, demobilized at Shelburne in 1783, on the Miramichi in 1784, dead at Lower Newcastle on 11 December 1834. Roman Catholic. Married Grace MacLean. Land on both sides of the river; residences listed as Loggieville, Bay du Vin/Hexham, and Lower Newcastle
(NBGS First Families: Alexander MacDonald).
The stone farm at the Bartibog–Miramichi confluence is a provincial historic site, built 1815–1820 for that Alexander
(HistoricPlaces: MacDonald Farm).
That Alexander had a son Dugald, born 17 August 1805 at Hexham, twin of John, married to Jane Davidson in 1837, farming at Lower Newcastle, dead before 1891
(NBGS First Families).
Another son, Alexander Jr (1802–1853), died at Bayside. Those are the people MacDougall is trying not to mix with Simon’s father.
Dougald and Flora Shaw (the letters’ earlier generation).
MacDougall’s 1 September letter treats Simon’s father as a different Dougald, married to Flora Shaw. Brady’s site list has a Dugald McDonald death at Bartibog on 1 September 1831
(stated: Joe Brady, 24 Aug 2026).
The 1818 marriage of Mary to George McInnes, as MacDougall read it, puts Mary and her parents Dougal and Flora at Black River / St Laurent de Newcastle, with a St Laurent mission at French River, now Hardwick village
(stated: Richard MacDougall, 1 Sep 2026).
This pass found no public file that independently lists Dougald and Flora Shaw.
Angus of lot 3 (the letters’ Bay du Vin farm).
MacDougall placed Simon’s household on lot 3, Angus McDonald, orchard near A/4. The grant, he wrote, went to Angus (spouse of Isabel Bealton) and sons Donald, John, and Alexander; two of Simon’s sisters married John and Alexander; Simon later took the land from those sisters
(stated: Richard MacDougall, 31 Aug 2026).
A Buckley descendant memoir independently puts an Angus McDonald from Inverness on a 200-acre grant on the southeast side of the Bay du Vin River, adjacent to the Buckleys, applying for land in 1820 and taking a share in an 1824 survey. That Angus, in the memoir, had a wife Anne, a daughter Mary who married John Buckley in 1820, and an infant Isabella born on the ship into the bay
(stated: William R. Tash, newirelandnb.ca).
The memoir is not a grant register, and the wife’s name (Anne vs Isabel Bealton) does not match MacDougall’s. It does show that an Angus McDonald grant on that river was a local fact in later family writing, and that McDonald grants on the bay were many.
Simon, Sarah, Will, Annabella, Julianne.
MacDougall reported baptisms at St Margaret’s for Will and Annabella as children of Simon MacDonald and Sarah Shortall, and no Julianne there; a Julia McDonald in 1863 was Patrick McDonald and Anne Conroy’s child
(stated: Richard MacDougall, 12 Apr 2026).
Brady wrote that Julianne was born April 1863 in Chatham and is his great-grandmother
(stated: Joe Brady, 2 Apr 2026).
Ken is, in MacDougall’s account, great-grandson of William
(stated: Richard MacDougall, 31 Aug 2026).
No digital marriage, census image, or grave photograph for this household was retrieved in this pass.
The Bayside deed chain
MacDougall’s 1 September letter traces a Bayside lot: 1799 grant to Alex (sheriff sale after a hanging, then re-grant); 1819 to Dougald; 1832 Ranald to Alexander Jr; 1834 to Simon Alex McDonald; 1842 Janet; 1855 Jessie back to Simon; 1857 to Luther and John B Williston
(stated: Richard MacDougall, 1 Sep 2026).
He has not split that Dougald from Flora Shaw’s husband. The last buyers’ surname matches the Williston density GNB records at Bay du Vin in 1866 and the Luther Williston house the Wikipedia page still points to
(GNB: Bay du Vin; Wikipedia).
That is neighborhood, not proof that the 1857 lot is Julianne’s farm.
Who is still on the ground
MacDougall lives at Miramichi Bay and is named as a researcher on the Bartibog Alexander First Families file
(NBGS First Families).
Ken MacDonald is local, recently back to Ancestry, and wants to meet Brady
(stated: Ken MacDonald, 31 Aug 2026).
Grandchildren of Julianne’s daughter Sarah (Sadie) Brady and John A MacDonald — Leisa MacDonald Comeau, Colleen Craig, Peggy MacDonald Durelle — are the living south-shore cousins MacDougall named
(stated: Richard MacDougall, 31 Aug 2026).
What the map implies for the missing baptism
Bay du Vin had no local church when Julianne was born, in MacDougall’s account; children were baptised by travelling priests or taken to the nearest church
(stated: Richard MacDougall, 31 Aug 2026).
St Margaret’s building is dated 1861, two years before the claimed birth, and MacDougall already searched it. Saint Michael’s By-the-Sea did not exist until 1901. St Michael’s in Chatham did. The provincial and parish pages make that geography ordinary, not a special pleading.
What remains open
Julianne’s baptism, the 1871 dwelling, Sarah Shortall’s stone, Simon’s 1855 marriage act, and a deed image that ties lot 3 to Simon remain unseen outside the letters. The public story that is thick on this shore is Alexander of Bartibog’s. The letters’ claim is that Julianne’s people were the other cluster: Dougald and Flora Shaw, then Simon and Sarah on Angus’s lot at Bay du Vin, buried and visiting at St Margaret’s and, later, at By-the-Sea.