New Brunswick Museum. The New Brunswick Museum, located in Saint John, New Brunswick, is Canada's oldest continuing museum.
The New Brunswick Museum was incorporated as the Provincial Museum in 1929 and received its current name in 1930, but its history goes back much further. Its lineage can be traced back another 88 years to 1842 and to the work of Dr. Abraham Gesner.
On 5 April 1842 Abraham Gesner opened the Museum of Natural History, the precursor of the New Brunswick Museum, in one room of the Mechanics' Institute on Carleton Street, in Saint John. Income from his newly founded museum was not enough to solve Gesner's financial problems.
In 1843, his collection passed on to his creditors who, in turn, donated it to the Saint John Mechanics' Institute. Renamed the Mechanics' Institute Museum in 1846, an annual report dating from 1863 described it as, a large and valuable collection of minerals, a great variety of zoological specimens, and many Chinese, Indian and other curiosities frequently receives additions from foreign sea captains and others who get into their possession foreign articles of an attractive description.
When the Mechanics' Institute closed in 1890, the Natural History Society of New Brunswick acquired the collection and the museum was moved, first to the then new Market Building then, in 1906, to 72 Union Street. Under the care of its curator and later director, the entomologis