Tidnish Bridge Assembly, NB

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[edit] History

New Brunswick is situated on the east coast of Canada. It is bordered on the west by Maine, on the south by Nova Scotia and the Bay of Fundy, on the east by the Northumberland Strait and on the north by Quebec. Approximately 40% of the population is French-speaking, and most of its young people are bilingual.

Brethren pioneers from Ireland and Scotland reached New Brunswick in the mid 1880s. John Knox McEwen was perhaps the first. John Grimason, in a report written from Baie Verte, New Brunswick in 1886 to the Barley Cake magazine stated: “A whole province here to myself, all strangers to me, but they are the kind God saves – the poor.”

Mr. and Mrs. John Martin (not John M. Martin from Ontario) came to New Brunswick from Kilmarnock, Scotland in the mid 1880s and settled on a farm near New Scotland, a community northeast of Moncton. Mr. Martin had previously preached in the Boston area, Maine, and California. He reported the following in the Barley Cake in 1887: “...Brother Mitchell and I left Nova Scotia on July 1st for Tidnish, New Brunswick where Brother Grimason had labored a year ago and a few souls got saved and gathered out according to Matthew 18:20. We had two weeks meetings in Timber River 8 miles north of Tidnish. Before we left, we had the pleasure of baptizing two brethren. Then we went to Buctouche, 62 miles north on the coast (quite a French settlement) with several Scotch settlements in that neighbourhood... The people came out well, some from far distances. We had a schoolhouse at Mill Creek (6 miles from Buctouche)...” Mr. Martin describes many other preaching experiences in the Maritimes in subsequent letters.

Ansley Goodwin, a native of Timber River, was saved in 1886 when Mr. Grimason and Mr. McEwen visited there. The Tidnish Bridge Assembly, NB was started at that time, and is the one referred to by Mr. Martin. This was apparently the first brethren assembly in New Brunswick. An assembly was also planted shortly at Bayside. Ada King wrote that she had been at the opening of the Bayside Gospel Hall, NB in January 1889.

David Scott was born in Ireland in 1867, according to his grandson Gaius Goff. At the age of 18, he emigrated to the USA. While in fellowship in the Cliff Street Gospel Hall in Boston, he became interested in taking the Gospel to the Maritimes. He came in the summer of 1891 to New Brunswick on his vacation and preached in Coates Mills, Kent County, where several were saved. He was then commended by the Cliff Street Assembly, NB left his employment in Boston, and came to the Coates Mills area the next year, accompanied by John Blair. Many were saved in the Coates Mills/Dundas/New Scotland area while Mr. Scott was preaching there.

Many people from Scotland emigrated to Canada in the 1890s and obtained land grants in New Brunswick. One of these families were the Donald Macdonalds. Mr. and Mrs. J. Harris Bears and their family moved to New Brunswick in 1897 and joined with the assembly in New Scotland.

The New Scotland Assembly, NB was formed around 1896. After the Donald Macdonalds arrived, the Christians met in their home for the morning meetings; other meetings were held in the local schoolhouse. Later, after the Macdonalds moved to Moncton, the assembly met in John Martin’s house. J. Harris Bears and Donald Macdonald were Sunday School teachers in the New Scotland Assembly, NB and also preached the Gospel along with John Martin.

Others in the New Scotland Assembly, NB were Mrs. Gourley, Mr. and Mrs. Cary Brown, and Mr. and Mrs. Hugh MacLean of MacLean Settlement. As the older Christians died and the younger ones left the area, the meeting in New Scotland slowly diminished, and discontinued after the death of John Martin in 1924.