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John Copp

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This community owes its existence to the great number of immigrants who packed their bags in their native home and set off to that far off land called Canada and to an area called the Miramichi. This migration occurred for a number of reasons and at different points in history.

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It brought French, Scottish, English and Irish to our shores and they then established the historical record of the Miramichi.

For many of us, to establish the family record you had to dig through immigration records and census data and if you were lucky a lot was recorded in the family bible. It was from these sources we learned of our origins and about the family stories of coming to and surviving in these communities on the Miramichi.

A lot of this information came from family members who came to the Miramichi in the early part of the 1800s, and years later, when our interest was sparked, it became very difficult to verify those family stories.

In doing the last series of articles on Newcastle and Castle Street, one document that I had access to was the Asoyuf family tree. This document had its immigration pattern established in the early 1900s, which made the historical track much easier to follow in terms of the family’s integration into and impact on the Miramichi region.

The family record shows that the family’s early origins were in Lebanon, and young family members left that country to seek better opportunities in Canada.

The original name was Kassouf, which was a difficult name for Canadian immigration officials to spell and pronounce, so it was quickly transformed to Asoyuf. I have heard numerous stories of how family names were changed when people entered this country in the early 1800s.

For immigrant families, fitting into a new land and dealing with the issues of education, language and work skills are still problematic today.

The Asoyufs arrived in Bale St.Anne and started immediately working as entrepreneurs in the community, making use of all resources made available to them. They found success by getting into the dry goods sales business and the lobster fishery, which soon provided enough economic support to move into larger communities such as Newcastle.

There they started to build business opportunities in dry goods, groceries, clothing and brick factories all seeming to originate from the new homes on Castle Street. I think this pattern has probably been repeated in many Miramichi families over the years.

The other very interesting note in the Asoyuf family tree is that even after a period of living in Canada and doing business in the community, difficulties always occur with rules and regulations.

As I had mentioned in a previous article on Castle Street, there was a business known as John O’Brien’s Clothing Store in the area. As a result of difficulties in dealing with banks and official immigration records, the family changed the original name of O’Feish to O’Brian for convenience of official documents.

Again this brings to view all those subtle little changes we notice in families and names and how change occurs. I can’t remember the number of times I have heard people discuss how their names changed and this occurred during a time that we could visibly recognize.

In this article I have included two photos. The first is the family gathering at the Seaman’s Hospital which demonstrates how families expand and continue to contribute to the overall development of the community.

As our population declines in New Brunswick, immigration has been deemed as a solution — I think in this situation we have a good case study of success in a community.

The second picture I have had for a while — this airplane belonged to Tom Edgett, who was married to Connie O’Brien, and they used to park the plane on the waterfront when they came to visit the family. I noticed recently the obituary for Tom Edgett. He used to take residents of the community up for rides in the plane on Sundays, which city council deemed to be to noisy and disturbing and took action to end the practice.