The “Indian Church”
at Beaumont

As a kid growing up in the area, that's the name is was always known as, the "indian church". But its correct designation is Saint Anne's Chapel, and the drive there from Moncton is one of the most scenic in the region no matter what time of year.

From the centre of Moncton drive east on Main Street, past the Chateau Moncton hotel on your right, past Champlain Place shopping mall on your left. Turn right at the major intersection. You are now on NB Route 106. Continue approximately 8 km, turn right onto the Dover Road, Route 925 and stay on this road. From here, the distance to Beaumont is about 20 Km.

This is a solidly Acadian French region. Yet, just about where the road comes downhill onto the flats, you'll note mailboxes bearing typically Albert County English names like "Steeves." Solidly English, Albert County lies just across the river, and this small English language enclave is a memento of the times when communication was by water.

In the village of Belliveau, en route to Beaumont, you can't miss the large "Belliveau Orchard" on the westerly facing hillsides. It's been there for over 80 years, and is the consequence of a particularly favourable microclimate. "It warms up early in the spring here," says co-owner Robert Bourgeois, "and stays warm late into the fall. Just five miles away, it's the other way around." Also in Belliveau Village look for the small road leading to the Belliveau wharf. Now almost unused and falling into disrepair, this imposing structure once harboured a considerable fleet of shad and salmon fishermen. The wharf is closed to cars, but you can walk out onto it. At low tide, you're way up over the muddy river bottom; while at high tide the water comes nearly to the top of the wharf.

Strategically situated at the tip of the cape, Beaumont itself is said to have been an Indian encampment before European settlers arrived. However, archaeological research done in 1992-94 for the Fort Folly band was unable to confirm this. Nonetheless, by the mid 1800's, nearby Memramcook had one of the largest Indian populations in the region, and in 1840 the New Brunswick Legislature acquired some 60 acres of land at Beaumont to replace a former Indian settlement in the vicinity of Dorchester, to be held "by the magistrates of Westmoreland County," in trust, for the MicMac.

The chapel was built in 1842, either entirely by the Indians, or by the French and natives working together. Saint Anne's Chapel is thus the first chapel built by and for the MicMac people of New Brunswick and was declared a historic site in 1989. The chapel contractor was Hilaire Louis Arsenault who built several churches both in New Brunswick and in Nova Scotia, while the altar is believed to be by Thomas Berlinguet (1790-1863) "A well known sculptor/architect who also created the Quebec National Assembly and Saint Thomas Church in Saint Joseph."

Both MicMac and French lived on the small reserve, and both attended the church, and also the small Beaumont school whose foundations were located and investigated in the course of the archeological work mentioned above.

In 1881, 40 people are reported to have been living on the reserve, "in four log cabins and ten wigwams." But the land was rough and stony, ill suited for cultivation. It had been logged over already, and by the turn of the century the local quarrying industry also had essentially ceased. As a side trip, if you drive a short distance uphill just before the church, and turn left, you'll come to the "Boudreau Quarry" whose olive coloured sandstone was extensively quarried for export to the United States in the 1850-1880 period; the Dakota Building in New York city where John Lennon was shot is built in part with stone from this quarry, and six miles of walkway in Central Park are ornamented with it as well. Also, a few hundred yards past the church, immediately the right side of the dirt road you'll see a deep water-filled pit. Here, pulp stones (used to grind logs into pulp for paper-making) and other grindstones were once quarried.

Unable to farm, without wood to log, and with prospects for other employment diminished, people drifted away from Beaumont. In 1913, only three or four families were left. The Beaumont school closed in 1937, the post office in 1953; by 1955 the last family was gone.

The MicMac of the Fort Folly band gravitated back to Dorchester. By the early 1930's they began requesting the Federal Government to sell the property at Beaumont and to apply the proceeds to acquiring a reserve nearer to Dorchester. That request unleashed no less than 40 years of letter writing. A perplexing issue was who exactly held title to the land at Beaumont. The property had been deeded to the "magistrates of Westmoreland County and their successors," and after almost 100 years, no one had a very good idea who these successors might actually be. Thus in 1966 the New Brunswick Legislature dissolved the original trust of 1844, but there still seems to be some doubt whether it had the jurisdiction to do so.

The little "Indian church" overlooking the river meanwhile has undergone something of a revival as a historical attraction and a venue for countryside driving. Just before you reach the church, if you take the uphill road to the Boudreau quarry, and continue on, you'll cross the peninsula to come out at Cormier Cove, another very pretty drive, this time along the Memramcook River. But it's a dirt road, and particularly in the spring when the ground is still wet, you'll want to have your sense of adventure in high gear and your four wheel drive in low.