Loyalist Trails 2021-01

Loyalist Trails Newsletter 2021-01 (January 3, 2021)

In this issue:

• Loyalists Gone Astray, Part Two of Two by Stephen Davidson UE
• Ethan Allen’s “Motley Parcel of Soldiery” at Montreal
• JAR: Texas and the American Revolution
• Jane and Susan Williams, Daughters of Patriarch Samuel
• Response to Query: Missing Sources for Information about Butler’s Rangers
• Kelly Arlene Grant: to Curtch, or not to Curtch?
• Book Info: “Loyalist History of Nova Scotia” and “Loyalist Cemeteries & Gravestones of Nova Scotia: Annapolis & Digby Counties”
• Heritage Resource for Ontario: Ontario Heritage Directory & Map
• Additions to the Loyalist Directory
• From the Twittersphere and Beyond

Connect with us:

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Loyalists Gone Astray, Part Two of Two by Stephen Davidson UE
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
Throughout the 19th century, the newspapers of New Brunswick regularly reported on the deaths of Loyalists who had once lived in the colony, but had come to the end of their days in other parts of the world. These so-called “strays” ranged from noteworthy men of power to the relatively unknown daughters of Loyalist refugees.
In 1836, New Brunswick settlers who originally hailed from Massachusetts were notified of the death of one of their own. Elizabeth Letitia Oliver. The youngest daughter of William Sandford Oliver had died on December 29th that year in Fort Erie, Upper Canada.
William’s father, Andrew Oliver, would be remembered by many refugees as the man appointed as Massachusetts’ Lieutenant Governor in 1771. Rebel reaction to Oliver’s loyalist stance hastened his death three years later. Only a very few relatives and friends attended his funeral, fearing attacks in the midst of a volatile political climate.
William Oliver eventually had to seek sanctuary with the Royal Army in Halifax when Loyalists fled in Boston in 1776. After serving with the Westchester Volunteers during the revolution, Oliver took his family to the settlement that would become Saint John, New Brunswick. The 35 year-old Loyalist, his wife Susannah (Honeywell), their 9 year-old son William, and another unnamed child were members of the spring evacuation fleet that arrived in May of 1783. Within a year, Susannah and the unnamed child had died.
William senior became Saint John’s first sheriff in 1785, a post he held for six years. He married Catherine Menzies, the widow of a Loyalist from Georgia, providing young William with a new stepmother in 1787. In 1792, Oliver was made the marshal of New Brunswick’s court of vice-admiralty. Five years later, he once again became the city’s sheriff. He was made the provincial treasurer in 1798, holding that post until his death. Oliver’s daughter, Elizabeth Letitia, was born sometime before her mother Catherine’s death in 1803. Two years later, 57 year-old Oliver married twenty-something Isabella Boyd. His third marriage lasted for 13 years, ending with Oliver’s death in his 70th year on February 22, 1818.
Besides the newspapers of the day, Elizabeth Oliver’s death was also noted in the register of St. Paul’s Church in Fort Erie, Upper Canada. The officiating rector, the Rev. John Anderson, noted that Miss Oliver was buried on January 1, 1837. Neither the cause of death nor her birthdate were recorded. Nor was there any hint as to why a woman born in Saint John, New Brunswick should die unmarried so far from her home. Located across the Niagara River from Buffalo, New York, Fort Erie is almost 1,400 kilometres from where Elizabeth Oliver was born. A “stray” indeed!
In 1840, New Brunswick’s reading public learned of the death of Stephen Jarvis, a Connecticut Loyalist who had once lived in Fredericton. He may have been the colony’s most interesting “stray”. A great deal of Jarvis’ life is known thanks to the memoir he wrote near the end of his life. Not published until 1907, An American’s Experience in the British Army is a richly detailed account of Jarvis’ adventures during the American Revolution.
What is not so widely known is that before he made his home in Upper Canada, Jarvis lived in Fredericton for 24 years. Along with his wife Amelia and their infant daughter Elizabeth, Jarvis established a home there in the summer of 1785. Beginning life in Fredericton as a shopkeeper, Jarvis eventually became the postmaster for the city. He also served as an officer in the local militia.
After the birth of 6 more children, devastating floods, destructive fires, the death of a son and almost drowning while delivering the mail, Jarvis decided to pull up stakes and move his family to York, Upper Canada in 1809 — much to the displeasure of his wife and children. Within nine years, Jarvis had been appointed the registrar of Upper Canada and later the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod.
The historian Dr. Henry Scadding described Jarvis as “the last man in Canada to give up the style of hair-dressing in {a wig} that was the fashion in Washington’s time … At the ceremony of the Opening of the House, part of his duty was to make several very fine bows, and his appearance, when in his silk hose and silver shoe buckles, with lace ruffles under his chin and about his wrists, {and} with sword in hand … he was the last of picturesque type now unknown. His courtly manners and distinquished bearing made his official bows the despair of all his successors.”
Jarvis retired from active life at age 70. He died fourteen years later on April 12, 1840 in York. The New Brunswick Courier noted that Jarvis had taken part “in the many engagemetnts during the American Revolution”, but failed to mention his 24 years of life and service in Fredericton.
Garrett Van Buskirk died at the age of 97 on November 11, 1843, but since he was a “stray”, his death was not noted in New Brunswick’s newspapers until the following January. Originally from Bergen County, New Jersey, Garrett came to Saint John with his wife Elizabeth (Potts) and two young children as part of the spring fleet. If he is the Buskirk who sailed on the Aurora in April of 1783, then he also escorted two Black Loyalists to the colony, Elizabeth Black and Harry Covenhoven.
During the revolution, Van Buskirk was a volunteer in the British Army making him — in the language of the era —“a Loyalist who bore arms”, and therefore an object of hatred for the Patriots of New Jersey. After a number of years as refugees in Saint John, Van Buskirk’s family crossed the Bay of Fundy sometime before 1790. They settled in Aylesford in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. There, he and Elizabeth had six more children.
Nelson, their second youngest son, eventually moved to Yarmouth, Elgin County, Upper Canada and then to Flint, Michigan. He died on May 25, 1900 — just a month before his 101st birthday.
More interesting, perhaps, than Garrett Van Buskirk’s war service or descendants is the fact that this veteran of the revolution suffered from elephantiasis during the last twenty years of his life. As the name suggests, those afflicted with this condition suffer from gross enlargment of limbs (usually the lower legs) or body parts due to the swelling of tissue.
In the 21st century, more than 120 million people in Southeast Asia and Africa suffer from this condition due to infestations of parasitic worms. However, other conditions can present as elephantiasis. Joseph Merrick, the famous “Elephant Man” of the Victorian era, owed his swollen limbs to a genetic disorder. This may have also been the case for Garrett Van Buskirk. The Loyalist died at age 97 in Aylesford.
New Brunswick’s fascination with the family of Benedict Arnold spanned a century. In January of 1889, the Bay Pilot of St. Andrew’s, New Brunswick published a bit of historical trivia about Arnold’s granddaughter. Charlotte Montague Arnold — the fourth child of Benedict’s oldest son, Richard—was born in the Augusta township near today’s Brockville, Ontario on January 25, 1814. She married Stephen Boyce Shipman, a merchant in Kingston, Upper Canada. During the course of their marriage the Shipmans would have four children. Charlotte, the granddaughter of a Loyalist who had once lived in Saint John, New Brunwick, died at the age of 38 on July 30, 1852 in Essex, Upper Canada.
As this brief review of New Brunswick’s 19th century newspapers reveals, the colony’s Loyalist settlers were part of a refugee community that spanned both time and geography. The trials that they had endured during the 8 years of the American Revolution forged bonds that lasted for generations. More than satisfying morbid curiosity, the notices of the deaths of “stray” Loyalists gave the readers of New Brunswick’s newspapers both a sense of connection and closure as they learned the ultimate fate of those with whom they had shared the trauma of being made refugees by forces beyond their control.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

Ethan Allen’s “Motley Parcel of Soldiery” at Montreal
by Mark R. Anderson 31 December 2020
When Ethan Allen described his defeat and capture outside Montreal at Longue Pointe on September 25, 1775, he observed that “it was a motley parcel of soldiery which composed both parties.” The enemy included Canadian Loyalists, British regulars, Indian Department officers, and a few Native warriors. In the autobiographical A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s Captivity, Allen only provided the broad outlines of his own force, which “consisted of about one hundred and ten men, near eighty of whom were Canadians,” and he curiously described the rest as “about thirty English Americans.”
Heavily reliant on Allen’s vague descriptions, with few other substantial sources to turn to, historians and biographers have often resorted to informed speculation as to who these Canadians and Americans were, and how they came to join Allen on his mission to take Montreal. Like many historical investigations, answering these questions has been analogous to solving a jigsaw puzzle missing many pieces, and without a reference picture. The digital age, however, has provided new pieces and shown new connections, producing a far more complete image of the men who fought alongside Allen in his last military battle.
Allen’s movements in the week before Longue Pointe form the puzzle frame. In September 1775, Ethan Allen was no longer the head of the Green Mountain Boys, who had recently been formed into a Continental regiment. He lacked a military command of his own and joined the invasion of Canada as a volunteer officer, with only an honorific title of colonel. Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler and Brig. Gen. Richard Montgomery focused their Northern Army’s efforts on a siege of the well-defended British border post at Fort Saint Johns. Meanwhile, they sent Allen around the enemy fort and north through the Richelieu River valley to Chambly, to act as a liaison with Canadian Patriots and the Kahnawake Indian nation. Read more…

JAR: Texas and the American Revolution
by George Kotlik 29 December 2020
In discussions on the American Revolutionary War, the contributions of Texas are seldom brought up. But in the 1770s, Texas, inhabited by Spaniards and Native Americans, was a hub of activity. While the signing of the Declaration of Independence occurred on July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, Tejanos (Texans) manned outposts, guarded New Spain’s claims, and reconnoitered neighboring Indian tribes.
In the early 1690s, Texas secured a formal place within the Spanish Empire when it became an official province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. By 1776 Spain had claimed dominion over what was then called New Spain, vast tracts of land in the North American Southwest, Central America, South America, and the West Indies. San Antonio de Bexar was the capital of provincial Texas. Only three civil settlements existed in Texas: the Villa de San Fernando de Bexar, La Bahia, and Villa de Bucareli (later renamed Villa de Nacogdoches in 1779). Altogether, Spanish Texas boasted a population of roughly 3,000 Spanish citizens.
On June 21, 1779, Spain officially declared war on Great Britain, entering the Revolutionary War on the side of France and the emerging United States. When news of Spain’s entry into the war reached New Orleans, Louisiana Governor Bernardo de Galvez cast his gaze on British West Florida. no time, Galvez assembled an army of 7,000 troops bent on West Florida’s conquest. Read more…

Jane and Susan Williams, Daughters of Patriarch Samuel
By Phil Eschbach
Patriarch Samuel Williams had two daughters, Jane his eldest child and Susan his youngest child (there were five brothers in between). Jane married Nathaniel Ashley and Susan married Drury Fort. Both marriages took place in North Carolina and both husbands were loyalists. Both families moved to Florida in 1776 at the behest of Samuel Williams. They, their father and three of their brothers were given a 500-acre plantation on the St. Johns River at Doctor’s Lake northeast of St. Augustine.
While in Florida, Nathaniel joined the East Florida Rangers first under Colonel Brown. These were militia units formed by British Governor, Patrick Tonyn, to protect East Florida from American Rebels and Indians. The rangers also ventured into Georgia and the Carolinas to assist their fellow loyalists. Along with Nathaniel were his father-in-law Samuel and brothers-in-law William Williams, Wilson Williams, Henry Williams, and Drury Fort, all active in fighting in North Florida and Georgia. They fought at the Battle of Thomas Creek in 1777, near present day Jacksonville. They were also at the Battle of Alligator Bridge in 1778 (Alligator Creek is a tributary of the Nassau River in north Florida), the last major skirmish in Florida where the loyalist Rangers repulsed the rebel enemy. One member of the Florida Rangers was Daniel McGirtt who had married Nathaniel and Jane’s daughter, Susannah. He is not to be confused with his uncle, also named Daniel McGirtt, the most feared ranger in South Georgia, “whose very name carried terror and consternation to all the women and children in Georgia during the darkest days of the Revolution”. He became most adept in stealing horses and cattle in cross border raids.
Later, during Florida’s transition from British rule back to Spanish, overall a lawless and violent period, Nathaniel and his son William rejoined the revived East Florida Rangers, led by Colonel Young, a loyalist from New England. They were entrusted with policing the St. Johns River area west and north of St. Augustine from the “banditti.” This was a band of outlaws, headed by the elder Daniel McGirtt, who was intent on wreaking havoc on loyalist pioneers who had settled between the St. Johns and St. Marys Rivers. They led raids into the area to steal cattle, horses, and slaves, aided by the confusion and lax protection of the plantations, due to the transition of power to the Spanish. Nathaniel Ashley was a sergeant and his son an ensign. In the troop was their cousin Burton Williams who was also a sergeant, the son of Henry Williams.
On December 31, 1784, Nathaniel and his brother-in-law Wilson Williams discovered that the elder Daniel McGirtt had stolen four of their hogs. Both Nathaniel and Wilson swore out affidavits for compensation against McGirtt to outgoing British Governor Tonyn, who referred the matter to incoming Spanish Governor Zespedes. But nothing came of it, probably because of the confusion with the change of governments.
In the 1784 census, Nathaniel stated that he had a wife and seven children, eight slaves, and several horses. But after Florida was receded to Spain, they moved to the ceded lands in Telfair and Wilkes Counties, Georgia. The so-called ceded lands were areas that had been ceded by the Indians to the state by treaty.
The Ashleys moved to St. Marys, Georgia in 1787, one of the first of twenty families to settle there, after signing the “Articles of Agreement” on Cumberland Island, which founded the town of St. Marys on the mainland. Of the twenty signees, three were Nathaniel and his two sons, William and Lodowick Ashley. Initially the county seat for Camden County was St. Patrick, where Nathaniel was chosen as one of the first of four county commissioners. But the county seat was changed in 1792 to St. Marys, a short distance to the southeast. In the first election in 1788, Jane’s brothers Wilson and Abner were elected as Sheriff and State Representative, respectively. Jane’s husband Nathaniel became tax collector. Jane and Nathaniel had eight children, two sons and six daughters, the first seven being born back in Anson County, North Carolina, the last in Georgia.
Nathaniel owned many parcels of land in and around the county, as well as in Telfair and Wilkes Counties. He had an unfortunate altercation with a Spanish official in 1788. Nathaniel, along with a group of men, had been rustling cattle across the St. Marys River in East Florida and a Spanish official, Henry O’Neal, tracked them down to Cumberland Island where Ashley killed him during an altercation. He was indicted for the murder and lost his office as sheriff. Unfortunately, the court records have been lost and there is no record of the result. Nathaniel temporarily left town, giving his son William power of attorney to “settle any controversies in Camden County” pertaining to his properties. He moved to the Beaufort, South Carolina area with his younger children, one of whom, Martha, while there, met and married Aaron Tison. Nathaniel later returned to Camden County when things settled down. He became tax collector and Justice of the Peace in 1789.
Nathaniel and Jane’s children were Lodowick, Christina, Sarah, William, Jane, Susannah, Martha, and Elizabeth. Nathaniel’s wife, Jane Williams Ashley, survived until the 1830s, outliving her husband and all her siblings. When Nathaniel died, sometime before 1800, she inherited for her lifetime Nathaniel’s 500-acre Lebanon Plantation between the Great Satilla River and Rose Creek, just northwest of St. Marys. Nathaniel’s estate was not settled till 1835, when many descendants, children and grand-children benefited from his wealth, among them the Cones, Scarboroughs, Boyds, Sheltons, Brinsons, Rogers, Sanders, Alfords, Carswells, Tisons, as well as several Ashleys. Many of the descendants migrated into the northern counties of Florida and further south in later generations. One Cone descendant, Fred Cone (1871-1948), from Lake City, became governor of Florida in 1937.
Patriarch Samuel’s last child was Susan or Susannah, born about 1755, in Anson County, North Carolina. In 1780, she married Drury Fort who lived nearby. The Forts were originally from Virginia but later settled on the Pee Dee River in North Carolina at the South Carolina border. Drury’s father, Drury Sr., had moved across the border into South Carolina on the river in the Ninety-Six District about the time Drury Jr. was born in 1755. Some references cite Drury’s father as a rebel, but Drury Jr. was a loyalist. If that is to be believed, then the family was split between the two sides, as was the case in many families, such as the Moultries of South Carolina. Drury Jr. and his wife, Susan Williams, moved south where he joined the East Florida Rangers in August of 1783 as a sergeant. This was Lieutenant Colonel William Young’s Troop 6. The East Florida Rangers were also formerly known as the King’s Carolina Rangers.
The Forts had at least two children, Drury 3rd and Jane. Drury married Jane Fitzpatrick and they briefly moved back to South Carolina in 1810, and then to Hayneville, Alabama, where they had at least three children whose many descendants reside in Alabama. Some of the Fort cousins also moved back to South Carolina. Drury’s sister Jane was born in St. Marys, Georgia and married Daniel Rambo in 1813, in Edgefield, South Carolina. They resided in Lexington, South Carolina where they had ten children. She died there in 1838. One of her descendants migrated to Rockledge, Florida in the 1920s, incredibly living just down the street from their ancestor Susan Williams Fort’s brother, Abner William’s direct descendant, and 6th cousin, my father.
In the next segment I will discuss the two sons of Jane Williams and Nathaniel Ashley, Lodowick and William who were both loyalists and briefly fought at the end of the war.
ENDNOTES

• Vocelle, James T. History of Camden County, Georgia. St. Marys, Georgia: Camden Printing Co., 1989.
• Lockey, Joseph Byrne. East Florida 1783-1785. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949.
• “East Florida Papers,” archives at Smathers Library.
• Camden County Historical Commission, comp. Camden’s Challenge. Woodbine, Ga.1976.
• Christian, John H. Founders of St. Marys. Pamphlet — no date.
• Feldman, Lawrence H. The Last Days of British Saint Augustine, 1784-1785. Baltimore: Clearfield Co., 1998

Response to Query: Missing Sources for Information about Butler’s Rangers
A query in last week’s Loyalist Trails noted that one of the problems of posting reference links to other sites is that the referenced site may move the material so the link is no longer valid.
UELAC has this article “Butler’s Rangers — Overview” at the bottom of which are nine links. Seven of these — listed — were broken.
Although we did not receive new links for all the broken ones, check out a raft of reference material now posted on the page (and a couple of items to be added early next week). The information was submitted by people including Gavin Watt, Wayne Mullins of the Grimsby Historical Society and Ronald Norris who notes that the Orlo Miller Fonds, 1854-1994, n.d.; RG 3 are at the Brock University Archives. Orlo wrote one of the referenced books and did much research on Butler’s Rangers.

Kelly Arlene Grant: to Curtch, or not to Curtch?
27 December 2020
Last night I was watching a little YouTube video* from the Highland Village in Iona Cape Breton. I won’t go into how seriously wrong the costuming is, but one of the characters wearing the iconic curtch got me thinking…
Most people who study Scottish dress at all know about the curtch, and the portrait of an early eighteenth-century henwife at Castle Grant by Waitt, dated 1706.
Let’s dismantle her clothing, shall we? Her bodice and sleeves are very much in keeping with seventeenth century clothing than anything that may have been worn by early nineteenth century colonial people in Cape Breton. Also, her curtch is multi layered and probably several types of caps, coifs and the final curtch. Her neckwear is also in keeping with earlier seventeenth-century styles. Read more…

Book Info: “Loyalist History of Nova Scotia” and “Loyalist Cemeteries & Gravestones of Nova Scotia: Annapolis & Digby Counties”
Both books are now also available in Kindle format from Amazon priced at less than $10 and if you are a member of kindle unlimited they are Free.
They are also now available in hardcover as well as paperback and for “Loyalist History of Nova Scotia” it is a 2nd edition that has been enlarged to 78 pages to include additional photographs, one of which is a map of Nova Scotia. See at Amazon:
“Loyalist History of Nova Scotia”
“Loyalist Cemeteries & Gravestones of Nova Scotia: Annapolis & Digby Counties”
We can all look forward to better times in the New Year.
Brian McConnell, UE

Heritage Resource for Ontario: Ontario Heritage Directory & Map
The OHS is proud to announce the launch of our updated Ontario Heritage Directory & Map. It shows a list of over 400 of the OHS’s current Affiliate Members (incorporated through the OHS) and Institutional Members in Ontario. Our database of member groups includes a wide breadth of heritage organizations from all parts of the province, such as historical societies, historic sites, libraries, archives, museums, cultural centres, municipal heritage committees, cemetery preservation committees, and more.
The Directory & Map is free to use for anyone in Ontario or around the world.
The map provides a visual representation of heritage activity across Ontario, helping users find and connect with our Affiliate and Institutional members. It will raise the profile of our groups across the province.
Users may focus on a particular region by zooming into the interactive map, or may enter a term (e.g. city) in the directory’s search box.
Each listing includes the publicly available address, phone number, and email address. In addition, listings link to websites and social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Logged-in members may update their public listings at any time, or may let us know if they wish to make changes.
If your organization is not an OHS member but would like to be included in the Directory & Map, you may join through our website, or email us at ohs@ontariohistoricalsociety.ca.
Members are encouraged to make use of this new online service and share it with their friends and colleagues.

Additions to the Loyalist Directory
As time permits, we add information to the Loyalist Directory. The latest additions and updates are as follows:

• Martin Dwyer originally from New York, served in the King’s Rangers and Delancy’s Brigade, and received land in King’s County PEI – by Kevin Wisener
• Patrick Dwyer served in the The St. John’s Volunteers, and received land at York River, lot 32, Queens County, PEI – by Kevin Wisener
• Thomas Dwyer from New York served in the King’s Rangers and received a 100-acre land grant at Kings County, PEI – by Kevin Wisener
• Edward James was born in England and in the Navy. Left with permission to join the K.O.R in New York. Fought in the unsuccessful campaign to relieve General Burgoyne. Then served garrison duty in NS. Sent to Lunenburg/Chester with Captain Bethel’s company. Stayed at Lunenburg after the war and was highly successful, twice elected as an MPP (today this would be MLA), and one of the county Justices of the Peace. by Andrew Payzant
• Rulof Rulofson from Middlesex, Hunterdon County, New Jersey served in the New Jersey Volunteers and received land in Hampton, Kings County, New Brunswick
• Casper Van Dusen from Dutchess County NY to Adolphus Town in Ontario from Branch records by Jo Ann Tuskin
• Walter Willett from Bucks County, Pennsylvania to Granville, Annapolis County NS, served in the Bucks County Light Dragoons and British Legion – by Andrew Payzant

Please help us build the directory by contributing more information for it. Contact loyalist.trails@uelac.org for instructions and guidance.

From the Twittersphere and Beyond

• Two days before Christmas, on December 23rd, 2020, a recent interview I did for “How We Got Here – Genealogy for Atlantic Canadians” was published as a Podcast. The interview focused on my recent book “Canada’s Ulster – Scots”, and also discussed the Loyalist connections. This Book should be of interest for some if you had Loyalist ancestors who were Ulster – Scots as I discuss in the interview. In the book I refer to several well known United Empire Loyalists including Bishop Charles Inglis, a native of Co. Donegal, Ireland. There is a chapter devoted to him. Listen to the Podcast… Brian McConnell, UE
• Loyalist Daniel Weekes, born on Long Island, New York granted land for service in Loyalist regiment in Nova Scotia lived at Ship Harbour until 117 (see part of his death notice).
• In 1767 Chambers Blakely arrived in S. Carolina from Ireland on ship ‘Earl of Donegal’ with parents & siblings. He joined British 96th District militia in 1780. After service as Loyalist in November, 1782 boarded ship ‘Argo’ for Nova Scotia where granted lands at Ship Harbour.
• Map of 16 regimental blocks of land laid out for Loyalist Regiments in New Brunswick, 1783 – 84. This formed nucleus of New Province. Source: “The Royal Provincials”, pamphlet published 1985 by City of Fredericton
• This Week in History
  • 27 Dec 1770, the Massachusetts Council approved pay for provincial troops who had served at Castle William. On orders from London, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson had given control of that island fort to the British army. The Council complained bitterly.
  • 29 Dec 1774, New Hampshire governor John Wentworth wrote to Gen. Thomas Gage in Boston that the rebellious spirit in his province “has been exceedingly augmented since the return of the Delegates, from the continental Congress.”
  • 30 Dec 1775 Washington permits recruiters to discuss enlistment with free blacks, reversing earlier policy.
  • “I just took a look at poor Boston from Prospect Hill. There seems to be a number of very fine buildings in Boston, but god knows how long they will stand. They are pulling up all the wharves for firewood.” Martha Washington. Read the letter…
  • 31 Dec 1775 Patriot attempt to take Quebec City fails & Gen. Montgomery is killed in the effort.
  • 26 Dec 1776 Patriot forces rout Hessians at Trenton, giving the rebels a crucial victory over the British.
  • 27 Dec 1776 News of Washington’s victory at Trenton reaches Philadelphia, raising spirits.
  • 2 January 1777 Second Battle of Trenton. “General George Washington at Trenton” is a large full-length portrait in oil painted in 1792 by the American artist John Trumbull of General George Washington at Trenton, New Jersey, on the night of January 2, 1777.
  • 29 Dec 1778 In the First Battle of Savannah, Georgia, militia and Continentals are defeated by British forces.
  • 28 Dec 1781 Lt. Col Henry Lee plans attack on British troops on John’s Island, SC; plan fails due to high water.
  • 1 Jan 1781 1500 men of Pennsylvania Line kill officers in mutiny, march on Congress.
  • 1 Jan 1782 Loyalists begin widespread evacuation from America, heading to Nova-Scotia and New-Brunswick.
• Clothing and Related:
  • In the mid-19th C., the Pauquet Brothers created a vast portfolio of engravings depicting 18th C. historic fashions. This piece, showing an elegant unnamed Duchess from the court of Louis XVI, was based off a 1783 illustration by the famous 18th C. artist, Moreau le Jeune.
  • The embroidery design on this 1780s redingote is remarkable. It has created the illusion of buttonholes out of which, centre left, a spray of lily of the valley springs in asymmetric style. It is a work of art by needle
  • close up of bodice of 18th Century dress, 1778-80, This winged polonaise is so small that it must have been worn by a girl of no more than 14 years old
  • Robe a l’Anglaise originally made as an open front gown in 1770s but altered to a round gown during the 1780s. Linen plate-printed in indigo with a repeat pattern. It is believed to be the wedding dress of Deborah Sampson – a woman worth looking up!
  • 18th Century waistcoat, made of silk woven by a well-known 18th Century London weaving company, Maze & Steer.Their pattern book of “Fancy Vestings & Handkerchief Goods” is also held in collection & features this design woven in 1788 in 3 colourways via @V_and_A
  • 18th Century men’s breeches of pink silk with silver thread embroidery, 1770-1790’s
• Townsends
  • This Is Why I Do What I Do
• Miscellaneous
  • This is a rare anti-slavery bag from 1827. The front has an enslaved individual and the back has a six line anti-slavery verse. A hand-written note gives some of the bag’s history. It reads, “Jane neale to her dear friend Sarah Lloyd Christians town 4th month 26th 1827” The verse:
    • “Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;/And worse than all, and most to be deplor’d,/And human nature’s broadest, foulest blot,/Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat/With stripes, that Mercy with a bleeding heart,/Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast”
  • The oldest door in Britain, in @wabbey. Made from wood from the original Anglo-Saxon abbey, consecrated today in 1065, it is just under 1000yrs old. Hewn from mature oak, that means the trees that produced these planks could have been saplings when the Romans evacuated Britain.
  • Happy 2021! The 8th day of Christmas my true love sent to me eight Sèvres biscuit (unglazed) porcelain groups of a maid milking a cow (‘La Vache’), c1775. Modelled by E-M Falconet (1716-91) in 1759, after a drawing of J-B Huet.

Published by the UELAC
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