The Esther

Loyalist Ships: The Esther

In The King’s Loyal Americans: The Canadian Fact by B. Wood-Holt, some ship names that appear repeatedly are: Baker and Atley, Canso, Cyrus, Eagle, Esther, John and Jane, Keppel, Nicholas and Jane, and Thetis. There are others, but they appear infrequently.

According to this book, my ancestor who served in the 3rd Battalion of the New Jersey Volunteers came to the River Saint John aboard the ship Esther. I have a copy of his discharge papers, which are signed on 10 Oct 1783, so I assume the ship arrived about that time.

Below is a list of the Loyalists of the 3rd Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers, who travelled aboard the Esther..

Loyalists of the 3rd Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers aboard the ship “Esther”

River Saint John, Fall 1783

• Extracted from The King’s Loyal Americans: The Canadian Fact, by B. Wood-Holt, Saint John, N.B., 1990, Appendix I.

[submitted by Gayle Pittman]

Addendum (May 2008)

I am descended from four lines of New Brunswick Loyalists, the Napiers, Fords, Applebys, and Wannamakers. What a great time I had researching these families! But I write principally to say that the Wannamakers came to New Brunswick on the ship ESTHER in the Fall fleet.

The following information is from Esther Clark Wright’s book LOYALISTS OF NEW BRUNSWICK, which lists the ESTHER as 384 tons, Robert Gill, master (pg. 73). “Most of the Fall fleet arrived on 29th Sept. 1783, but the MARTHA and the ESTHER have not shown up yet. Then, on Oct. 13th, Colonel Richard Hewlett reported that the ESTHER had arrived, but the MARTHA had been wrecked on a ledge of rocks off the Seal Islands between Cape Sable and the Bay of Fundy “(pg. 85). In the records upon arrival it says only “ESTHER, 384 tons, Robert Gill; 3 New Jersey Volunteers, ?” (no number of passengers given). The ESTHER, according to the account given by one of the passengers, Mrs. Lewis Fisher, wife of a private in the 3rd New Jersey Volunteers, to her granddaughter, was nearly lost through going on the wrong “track” (pg. 87).

– Rev. Jessie C. Drysdale, UE