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 - Inverness County - Polling Districts 1-15 - Roll: M-876

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 Inverness County is divided up into fifteen 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. Plaster Cove	831	879	1710	239
2. Judique	861	971	1832	241
3. River Inhabitants	741	747	1488	206
4. Port Hood	523	508	1031	148
5. Mabou	1387	1350	2737	407
6. Broad Cove (Intervale)	701	693	1394	190
7. Broad Cove	414	425	839	108
8. Margaree	187	196	383	56
9. Young's Bridge	484	459	943	120
10. Friar's Head	371	366	737	106
11. Cheticamp	732	672	1404	216
12. Whycocomagh	1098	1126	2224	337
13. Lake Ainslie	392	455	847	128
14. River Dennis	612	605	1217	170
15. North East Margaree	579	602	1181	186
TOTALS	9913	10054	19967	2858

Inverness County

Established as the County of Juste au Corps in 1835, Inverness County was given its present name in 1837. It was called Inverness after Inverness in Scotland, the land from which many of the early settlers came. The boundaries of Inverness County had been previously defined when Cape Breton Island was divided by statute into three Districts in 1823. Inverness County was established within the boundaries of the Northwestern District of Cape Breton Island.

Click the buttons below to see the complete Inverness 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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