Victoria County
An ethnically mixed farming and forest industry region bounded by Maine and five other counties, Victoria County is the first to encompass both sides of the St John River as it makes its way down through the province. From just above the great cataract at the county’s major town of Grand Falls south to Carleton County farms crowd the river on both sides. To the north and east, up the Tobique to Plaster Rock and the interior highlands the county is heavily forested. The region was initially a refuge for Acadians escaping the British after 1755 and was later settled by disbanded Loyalist regiments to help secure the border with the United States, and in the nineteenth century Irish immigrants.In the nineteenth century, Grand Falls was the site of a significant British fort, as was Presque Isle in the southern part of the county. They guarded the border and secured the overland route to Canada. Both sites supported marches of British units to the Canada’s in the War of 1812, the crises of 1837, and the war scare with America in the 1860s.