Dwayne & Francine Meisner's Family Tree

The Genealogy of Dwayne Meisner and Francine Williams

Some Districts, like cities and towns have more than one Sub-District included in the table. The program automatically loads the images for the first Sub-District in the group. When you get to the end of the images for a particular Sub-District, you can click the "Choose Next Image Set" button and then choose the button in sequence below the image viewer to load the next set of images. If there are no extra Sub-Districts for the area, the "Choose Next Image Set" button will not be shown. Click the "Toggle Sub-District Menu" button to show or hide the Sub-District buttons. You can choose to use either the Ancestry image viewer (if you have a subscription), or the image viewer I created to view Library & Archive Canada's free images.

1861 Census of Nova Scotia - Hants County - Polling Districts 1-12 - Roll: M-880

The 1861 Census of Canada is a collection of five provincial censuses. The first national census wasn't held until 1871, because confederation didn't occur until 1867. In 1861, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island only recorded the names of the heads of households, while New Brunswick, Canada East and Canada West recorded the names of everyone in the household. The census for Hants County is divided up into twelve polling districts. Unfortunately, no place names were listed. I was able to correctly determine the place names for each poll district by reading the book "Report of the Secretary of the Board of Statistics on the Census of Nova Scotia, 1861", that was published in 1862. The table below is from the book as well. You can see the book that has been digitized by Google. I have included the count of males and females in the households. This helps the researcher work backwards from later censuses that list the names of all household members. I have also attempted to transcribe all the names with the common spellings used today.

View Population Data | Close Population Data

Polling Districts	Total Population			Number of Families
Polling Districts	Males	Females	Total	Number of Families
1. Windsor	1093	1178	2271	400
2. St. Croix	607	497	1104	182
3. Brooklyn	552	533	1085	196
4. Scotch Village	1148	1106	2254	424
5. Falmouth	579	606	1185	213
6. Kempt	1019	946	1965	331
7. Rawdon Church	392	367	759	125
8. South Rawdon	324	300	624	101
9. Noel	971	820	1791	299
10. Nine Mile River	972	948	1920	314
11. Maitland	997	970	1967	327
12. Chester Road	273	262	535	91
TOTALS	8927	8533	17460	3003

Hants County

Ultimately getting its name from the County of South Hampton in England, popularly called Hampshire, and abbrieviated to Hants, Hants County was established in 1781 out of part of what had been Kings County. The words of the minutes of the Council of Nova Scotia for June 17, 1781 make it clear that the distance from Horton (the County town of Kings County) and the inconvenience of crossing the Avon River to transact county business were factors which led to a separate county being formed. Four and a half years later its boundaries were more precisely defined and set forth by the Governor and Council in 1785. The boundary lines of Hants were duly surveyed and confirmed by the Lieutenant Governor 1828. Subsequently in 1861, Hants County was divided into two Districts called East Hants and West Hants.

Click the buttons below to see the complete Hants County census records for 1861.
Click here to return to the Nova Scotia census map.

Dwayne & Francine Meisner's Family Tree

The Genealogy of Dwayne Meisner and Francine Williams

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