Description of Historic Place

Saint John the Baptist Church is located in Corberrie, Digby County, at the crossroad of Highway 340 passing through New Tusket, Corberrie and Salmon River, and the back road from Church Point and Concession. The building is a wood frame structure with a front tower attached to the main nave. The building and property are located in the provincial designation.

Heritage Value

Saint John the Baptist Church is valued as the second oldest Roman Catholic Church in Nova Scotia and because of its association with Abbé Jean Mandé Sigogne and Frederick Armand Robichaud.

Born in France in 1763, Jean Mandé Sigogne arrived in Nova Scotia in 1799. He had been living in exile in England for the previous seven years after leaving France during the French Revolution. A Roman Catholic Priest, and later Justice of the Peace, Sigogne spent the last 45 years of his life serving the Acadian and the Mi'kmaq peoples until his death in 1844. During his life in Nova Scotia Abbé Sigogne supervised the construction of nine churches, his seventh one being Saint John the Baptist Church. The cornerstone for St. John the Baptist was laid in 1837; construction finished and it was consecrated in 1841. It is the only one of Sigogne's churches that remains today and it is the second oldest Roman Catholic Church in Nova Scotia.

Frederick Armand Robichaud was born in 1785 in Meteghan, NS. He later moved to Corberrie where in 1836, he was one of the first two Acadians elected to the Provincial Legislature. He is buried in the cemetery that surrounds St. John the Baptist Church.

This wooden frame church with its front tower is still an active church today.

Source: Provincial Heritage Property files, no. 140, Heritage Division, 1747 Summer Street, Halifax, NS

Character-Defining Elements

Character-defining elements of St. John the Baptist include:

- building form and massing of the wooden church with its front tower entrance;
- gabled roof;
- Romanesque Revival style windows;
- shingled steeple;
- cemetery surrounding church.