Loyalist Trails Newsletter 2020-47 (November 29, 2020)

In this issue:

  • Remembrance Day – Unmarked Graves
  • Loyalist Trails Fall Issue Nov. 2020
  • New Online Doc Series from QAHN: “The Scandal Makers”
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Loyalist Survivors: Part Two of Two
  • Museum Marks 200 Years of Recorder and Times
  • JAR: Contingencies, Capture, and Spectacular Getaway: the Imprisonment and Escape of James Moody
  • Webinar: The British Legion in the Southern Campaigns — December 1, 2020, 7PM EST
  • Ben Franklin’s World: The Great Dismal Swamp
  • JAR: The Aborted Virginia Campaign and Its Aftermath, May to August 1781
  • Borealia: Settler colonial violence and the Maritime fisheries
  • The Queen’s Wedding Gown
  • Nathan Tidridge Awarded The Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Teaching
  • Additions to the Loyalist Directory
  • Where in the World is ????
  • From the Twittersphere and Beyond

Connect with us:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/uelac
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/UELAC

A Second Remembrance Day for Unmarked Graves
Last Post Fund | Fonds du Souvenir: Unmarked Grave Program (UMG)
Since 1909, the Last Post Fund’s mission is to ensure that no Veteran is denied a dignified funeral and burial, as well as a military gravestone, due to insufficient funds at time of death.
The Unmarked Grave Program was created in 1996 with the objective of providing a permanent military marker for eligible Veterans who lie in unmarked graves. Eligible Veterans are those who have been buried for at least five years and whose grave is not identified with a permanent headstone or foot marker. Since the program’s inception, the Last Post Fund has identified and marked over 6,300 unmarked Veterans’ graves. According to VAC estimates, there may be between 2,000 – 3,000 unmarked Veterans graves remaining in Canada.
Occasionally, families of Veterans will contact the Last Post Fund to apply for a headstone for a deceased family member under the UMG program. More often, the Unmarked Grave program relies on volunteers to report unmarked graves. We hope you will join us on Monday December 7th, for a Zoom conference with two of the program’s most dedicated and prolific volunteers, Bobbi Foulds and Kyle Scott, both members of the Last Post Fund Alberta Branch, who will speak about their work as researchers for the Unmarked Grave Program.
Last Post Fund Website: https://www.lastpostfund.ca/ Also on Social media Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
The website link above will give you further information about the project which includes those who served since Confederation – https://www.lastpostfund.ca/EN/UGP.php

Time: Dec 7, 2020 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting: https://zoom.us/j/93208840384?pwd=ZFo5SVlKSUR2ZHhBSXVUNnhLMVFkUT09
Meeting ID: 932 0884 0384
Passcode: 096973

PLEASE NOTE: If using these numbers to phone in, make certain that you check to see if they are local numbers for you as there may be a cost involved. Dial by your location
+1 587 328 1099 Canada
+1 647 374 4685 Canada
+1 647 558 0588 Canada
+1 778 907 2071 Canada
+1 204 272 7920 Canada
+1 438 809 7799 Canada
Meeting ID: 932 0884 0384
Passcode: 096973

Loyalist Trails Fall Issue Nov. 2020
The Fall issue of the Loyalist Gazette is now at the printers, thanks to the efforts of the design person Amanda and the rest of the Editorial team, Bob and Grietje and other helpers. It will take a couple of weeks to move it was through the printing, mailing and distribution process.
For those who have requested a digital copy, log into the new website at uelac.ca and you will find it in the members section.
The digital copy is available to anyone who is a member and can log into the Members’ Section. Enjoy!

New Online Doc Series from QAHN: “The Scandal Makers”
November 24, 2020.
The first in a brand new series of mini-documentaries from QAHN, called “The Scandal Makers,” is now available on Youtube. The series, which features Heather Darch as narrator, takes viewers to some of Missisquoi County’s oldest and most obscure rural cemeteries in an exploration of the seamier side of the region’s distant past…
See the first installment in this series, Episode 1: “The Hedge-creeper” at http://qahn.org/news/new-online-doc-series-qahn-scandal-makers

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Loyalist Survivors: Part Two of Two
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
Now we call it post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. A hundred years ago it was called “shell shock”. Two hundred years ago, there was no name for the condition that afflicted a number of the Loyalists who survived the American Revolution and then sought sanctuary in the Maritime colonies and the Canadas. But the symptoms of the disorder were the same then as they are now: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking and mood, and changes in physical and emotional reactions.
Some of the claims made by Loyalists for the consideration of the compensation board indicate that they had suffered from PTSD following the war. While symptoms usually present within a month of the traumatic event, they can sometimes not appear until years after the event. Words such as “melancholy”, “out his mind”, “loss of senses” and ‘temporary insanity” were the only ones the Loyalists of the 18th century had at hand to describe what they saw in their loved ones’ behaviour.
Mental illness, then as now, was a difficult subject to broach. It is little wonder that PTSD symptoms do not appear in the documents of the era. Claims before the compensation board focused on the service of the Loyalists and all that Patriots had taken from them, not the consequences of those experiences.
The residual stress of the revolution no doubt played a part in the suicide of Fyler Dibblee, a noted Connecticut lawyer who settled in Saint John, New Brunswick. His property and family members were attacked numerous times during the war. On one occasion the family had to flee a violent mob. Later rebels attacked the family, stealing all that they owned. Hats and shoes were snatched from the children upon threat of being shot. Two years later, Fyler’s wife and children watched in horror as Patriots invaded their home and dragged Fyler away. She would not see him again for six months.
Fyler’s sister Mary Dibblee, had “gone mad from fear” following violent rebel attacks on their father’s parsonage. In 1789, a decade after the mob had surrounded her home, Mary was still “as bad as ever”; her family had been “obliged to chain her some part of the time”. Unfortunately, such treatment at the hands of a rebel mob was all too common an experience for America’s Loyalists. Women, it should be noted, are at greater risk of suffering from PTSD, than men.
Just five days short of the anniversary of his arrival in New Brunwick, Dibblee was so overwhelmed by his reduced circumstances that he slit his throat. Severe anxiety and hopelessness about the future are both symptomatic of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Alcohol abuse is another symptom of PTSD. Again, it was not something that Loyalist descendants were likely to record in the biographies of their ancestors. But alcoholism’s absence from family histories does not mean it was not a factor in the undoing of many refugees.
John Jarvis was another Connecticut Loyalist who was traumatized by the events of the revolution. At his death, Jarvis was described as “sacrificing home and all to his attachment to the British Constitution.” The descendant who composed the obituary neglected to mention a few facts.
At the outset of the revolution, John had actually tried to remain neutral. He would later claim that he was “forced into British service” during a trip to Long Island. After escaping in 1776, Jarvis returned home where the Patriots promptly put him in jail.
In 1779, he asked the Connecticut general assembly for clemency. Jarvis acknowledged his “great offence” and declared that he was ” by his folly is brought into a most disagreeable and miserable situation.. ” In his petition, Jarvis promised to be “a faithful member of the United States“. However, the Connecticut assembly did not pardon Jarvis, and he –very reluctantly—was compelled to evacuate with the Loyalists.
After settling in Kingston, New Brunswick, Jarvis sank into alcoholism. Munson, John’s older brother, eventually came to his aid, and bought a house to shelter John’s family. Referring to his younger brother, Munson lamented, “liquor has got to be his master“. John’s wife Sally and their daughter Sarah had to live with the consequences of having an alcoholic in their home — a hardship that other family members could not help but see. Munson Jarvis described his niece Sarah as “a promising one had she but proper attention paid to her. Sally is a very good-hearted woman. I sincerely feel for her and her daughter.” Detachment from friends and family is yet another symptom of PTSD.
Joseph Carroll was an Irish immigrant who arrived in Pennsylvania just in time for colonial “troubles” to boil over into open rebellion. Carroll joined the Maryland Loyalists, a corps that had tasted defeat in West Florida and had ended the war doing garrison duty on Long Island. In September of 1783, Carroll was among those who boarded the Martha, an evacuation ship bound for the mouth of the St. John River. The ship was torn apart on hidden shoals off of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. A fishing vessel rescued Carroll after he had spent 48 hours clinging to a raft made from the ship’s wreckage. Once he was reunited with the other Loyalists in his evacuation fleet, Carroll sailed up the St. John River.
Whether due to the horrors of his wartime experiences or the trauma of being shipwrecked, Carroll would wrestle with alcoholism for the rest of his life. After marrying a much younger woman, Carroll tried to make a living by hunting, fishing, lumbering and then farming. He worked hard, but squandered what he earned on liquor. Forced to live in dilapidated houses and clothe her growing brood in hand-me-downs, his wife finally persuaded Carroll to set up a saddler shop in Fredericton.
The former Loyalist soldier excelled in making neck draft collars, a skill that should have provided Carroll’s family with the means to live well. But one night, Carroll dallied at a tavern following a Masonic Lodge meeting, overindulged, and agreed to cover a bad loan made by one of his Masonic brothers. When the man fell into trouble, his creditors came after Carroll for his promised assistance. But he was not at home. Carroll had quickly departed for Upper Canada, supposedly to seek compensation from the British government for his services during the war. He would eventually secure land in the new colony, settling there with his family in 1809. But the negative ripple effects of Carroll’s PTSD would continue to be felt over the succeeding decades, casting a shadow over the lives of his wife and children.
It would take a trained psychiatrist to determine if the Loyalists spotlighted in this series actually had post-traumatic stress disorder. However, there seems to be enough evidence in the documents of the era to indicate that the violence of the American Revolution that fueled Loyalist persecutions and tore men apart on battlefields had an impact that lasted long after the peace treaty was signed — and long after Loyalists had settled in their lands of refuge.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

Samuel Williams, Son of Henry, Grandson of Samuel
By Phil Eschbach
Samuel Williams the younger, Henry’s second son, grandson of Patriarch Samuel and brother of Burton, was born in 1770, probably in Anson County, North Carolina and moved first to Georgia in 1776, then to Florida with his family in 1781. He followed his father and brothers to the Bahamas in 1787. Samuel owned plantations in the Bahamas but decided to try his luck in Spanish Florida and returned there around 1803.
When Samuel came to East Florida, he registered two of his ships in St. Augustine, the Swift and the Minerva and received a land grant on the Halifax River for over 3,200 acres where he established a plantation with enslaved labor called The Orange Plantation and by 1810 was successfully growing sugar cane, cotton, citrus, rice and other crops for export. This acreage is now the city of Daytona.
Samuel married Ana Maria Hill, a local woman from St. Augustine, with whom he had four children, William Henry, Eliza Ann, Samuel Hill and John Theophilous. The Hills had migrated from Edgecombe County, North Carolina, to Wilkes County, Georgia, then to St. Augustine. The Williams family were probably known to the Hills, since the families’ migrations were from the same community in Georgia. Samuel died in 1811 and had to be buried on Anastasia Island because Protestants were not allowed to be buried in strict Catholic St. Augustine.
A number of other planters accompanied Samuel from the Bahamas and acquired property along the Halifax River as well. These included James Ormond (for whom Ormond Beach is named), Mrs. Kerr, John Bunch, Robert McHardy, the Andersons, and the Addisons, all mostly former loyalists.
Legend has it that in 1810 one of Williams’ runaway slaves from their Halifax property murdered James Ormond Sr., owner of the nearby plantation, Damietta, while walking with his nephew, Emanuel Ormond. The slave was caught, killed and cremated by Samuel.
After Samuel’s death, Ana Maria managed The Orange Grove with the help of her husband’s cousins William Henry, William, and Abner Williams. She was able to produce over $10,000 worth of crops for sale in 1812 ($350,000 in today’s dollars).
The widow, Ana Maria, fearful that she might lose ownership of her late husband’s property, decided to marry General Joseph Hernandez in 1814, a Spanish subject, of Minorcan descent. He eventually secured title to her considerable amount of property by 1823. He also possessed several of his own plantations, including Mala Compra, St. Joseph and Bella Vista. He was famous for being the first Hispanic elected to the US Congress and also for capturing Chief Osceola during the Seminole Wars. With Hernandez, Ana Maria bore another ten children, from whom many are descended and live in Florida today.
Samuel Williams had a child out of wedlock while living in the Bahamas. She was Caroline Eliza, born in 1792, daughter of Anne Dunbar, a prominent “woman of means,” who later married Joseph Sibley and moved to Charleston. Samuel adopted Caroline, and she came to Florida to live with the Williams family as the eldest of the children. She kept a fascinating diary, one of the few known from that area of Florida in the years of Florida’s Second Spanish Period (1783-1821). She married Robert McHardy, a surveyor, who was born in Scotland in 1796, and owned a 1,000-acre plantation on the Tomoka River, a short distance from the Orange Grove. One of their descendants became Lt. Governor of South Carolina.
Samuel’s oldest son, William Henry, born in the Bahamas in 1806, married Fannie Munro at the Government House in Nassau. She was a grandniece of George Washington. Her cousin was George Washington’s grandnephew, George L. Washington, who owned Washington Oaks near today’s Marineland and was married to one of Ana and Joseph Hernandez’s daughters.
In 1831, William and Fannie took over The Orange Grove Plantation, which they were given by William’s mother, Ana Maria. Shortly after they moved to Mosquito County, William Henry was appointed sheriff by Governor William Duval and was reappointed every year through 1835. In 1833, and again in 1834 and 1835, he was also appointed Justice of the Peace as well as Auctioneer and Notary. In 1835, William Henry sold The Orange Grove plantation to his brother, Samuel Hill Williams, and was appointed the first lighthouse keeper at Mosquito Inlet, now known as Ponce Inlet.
His appointment was the result of his superior qualifications as a ship’s captain and harbor pilot for Mosquito Inlet. William Henry moved into the station keeper’s house in 1835. Meanwhile in October that year, a hurricane struck, washing away his house and undermining the lighthouse. Williams abandoned the place and moved back to his family’s plantation, The Orange Grove. It was during the Second Seminole War of 1835 that they were forced to retreat to the safety of St. Augustine.
In 1836, James Ormond reported that during a heated battle at Dunlawton, with the Seminoles near William’s plantation, they were driven to their boats and into the river. In a defiant gesture, Lieutenant William H. Williams “pulled off his pants to wade and then got into the boat and kicking up his heels called out, ‘Kiss my ___!’ Just then a spent ball took him square in the ‘sitting down place’ leaving a black mark and quite a painful impression, for which he had no sympathy from us.” He continued, “So ended the fight of Dunlawton, in which we were completely whipped by the Indians. No doubt about it.”
Mosquito County was renamed Orange County on January 31, 1845, and William Henry was elected sheriff, becoming the first sheriff of the new Orange County. William Henry died on January 1, 1846, only forty years old. His wife Fannie survived him and lived another forty years. They had thirteen children, only five of which survived childhood.
William Henry’s brother Samuel Hill operated the Orange Grove Plantation, and their other brother Theophilous became General Hernandez’s plantation manager.
Samuel’s only daughter, Eliza, was born in 1807. Family tradition has it that Eliza and her three brothers were sent to England to be educated. In 1825 Eliza married Abram Bellamy (1800-1839).
Abram’s father, John Bellamy, a surveyor, was from South Carolina and originally settled on the St. Johns River at the Cow Ford, where he helped plat the town of Jacksonville in 1823, and later built the first federal road in Florida called the Bellamy Road that went from St. Augustine to Tallahassee. Abram became a lawyer and set up practice in St. Augustine in 1825, where he met and married Eliza Williams.
John Bellamy later moved to Monticello in Jefferson County and built a 1,600-acre plantation called Nacoosa, that he gave, along with fifty enslaved people, to his son Abram and his new wife Eliza Williams. The two settled there in 1827. They had seven children, two daughters (Josephine and Theodosia) of which married two brothers named Randolph and Thomas Jefferson Eppes, sons of Francis Eppes who was the grandson and heir of Thomas Jefferson. Francis was the founder of what was to become FSU in Tallahassee. He became mayor as well as the founder of the Episcopal Church in Tallahassee.
Abram died in 1839 and in 1843 Eliza married William Bailey who built her a new house on a 4,000-acre plantation in Jefferson County which she named Lyndhurst after her favorite place in England. She had another four children with him. She died in 1871, the matriarch of the Williams family.
The next installment will return to the original sons of the patriarch Samuel and will contain material about his next son Jacob Williams probably the most fervent of the Williams’ family loyalists.
ENDNOTES

  • Mills, Donna — Florida’s First Families, Spanish Censuses, 2011
  • “East Florida Papers,” archives at Smathers Library
  • Ormond, James. Reminiscences of the Life of James Ormond. WPA typescript, P.K. Yonge Library, 1892. Gainesville, Florida.
  • “House Documents, 27th Congress, 1842, Session II,” page 502.
  • Taylor, Thomas — Beacon of Mosquito Inlet, Lighthouse History, 1993
  • “Magnolia Monthly,” ed. Elizabeth Smith, Crawfordville, Florida 1973.

Museum Marks 200 Years of Recorder and Times
The Brockville Museum is staging an exhibit to mark the 200th anniversary of The Recorder and Times, Ontario’s oldest newspaper.
The exhibit, titled The Recorder and Times: 200 Years of Printing History 1821-2021, opens on Saturday and will continue well into the spring of 2021.
Viktor Kaczkowski, who speaks for the museum, said the exhibit will focus on the people and history of the local newspaper, rather than the news that it covered.
The museum promises a behind-the-scenes look at the paper’s history, including the notable characters who graced its newsroom and pressroom, including Betty MacDowell, Stu Paterson and Hunter Grant.
…Its first edition rolled off the press on Jan. 16, 1821 under founder Chauncey Beach, but it was sold two years later to William Buell, Jr., who owned and edited the weekly paper until 1849.
Buell, son of William Buell, a United Empire Loyalist who was a founder of Brockville, ran The Recorder as a platform for his reformist views and he promoted the development of the town by advocating improvements to transportation links. Read more…

JAR: Contingencies, Capture, and Spectacular Getaway: the Imprisonment and Escape of James Moody
by Kevin A. Conn 24 November 2020
One of the most famous or notorious of Tory partisans in the American Revolution was the New Jersey soldier and spy James Moody. Moody had tried to stay quietly neutral at the beginning of the war, but his refusal to sign a loyalty oath to the Patriot government of William Livingston had enraged his Patriot neighbors near the town of Hope in Sussex County, today part of Warren County. Moody had withstood verbal harassment and threats, including one occasion when rebel neighbors had waved tomahawks around his head, but when local Patriots actually tried to ambush and kill him as he walked his grounds with a Loyalist friend, Moody left his family in April 1777 and joined the New Jersey Volunteers, a Loyalist regiment raised by the last Royal attorney general of New Jersey, Cortlandt Skinner. Serving first as a volunteer, then as an ensign and after 1781 as lieutenant, James Moody spent most of the war detached from his unit. Skinner recognized his charismatic qualities and skills at intelligence gathering and guerrilla warfare, and Moody rapidly became one of Britain’s ablest agents, recruiting Loyalist soldiers, spying on the movements of the Continental army, and conducting raids into Patriot-held areas.
Beginning in 1776, New Jersey became one of the most hotly-contested regions of the entire Revolution. With the British conquest and occupation of New York in the fall of 1776, many inhabitants of New Jersey accepted British protection, swearing loyalty oaths to the Crown. They were disheartened, however, when the Continental Army won stunning successes at Trenton and Princeton in the winter of 1776–1777, leading British forces to retrench and retreat to New York City, Staten Island, and a toehold in New Jersey at a few points such as Paulus Hook (present-day Jersey City). Although the region was generally spared from large-scale clashes in the campaign season of 1777, that certainly did not mean that peace returned to New Jersey. Resurgent Patriot forces regained ascendancy over Loyalists and sought revenge and retribution for their treatment when British forces had the upper hand. Washington returned to New Jersey after the winter of 1778 and moved his army into central New Jersey, where he could harass British foraging efforts and shadow British forces in New York City and on Staten Island, screened by the Watchung Mountains. Both armies foraged and plundered in the region, epitomizing the rancorous civil strife that characterized the Revolution to a much greater extent than many traditional histories have admitted. Read more…

Webinar: The British Legion in the Southern Campaigns — December 1, 2020, 7PM EST
Tales of the Southern Campaigns is very pleased to host an upcoming Webinar on the British Legion in the Southern Campaigns. We hope this will be the first of a new series on the Partisans of the Southern Campaigns. A series that focuses on participants instead of events. With any luck, this series will go hand in hand with the Saturday Morning series that is still ongoing.
In this first time out, Todd Braisted will be getting things kicked off with the initial recruiting and actions in the north. Next, Wayne Lynch will survey the various actions involving the Legion (along with its input) in South Carolina during the British occupation of 1780. The survey will start back up with Legion actions in North Carolina and Virginia along with a quick wrap-up on how they were disbanded. With any luck, we will leave lots of time for discussion with those in attendance. The webinar is scheduled for 1 hour of speech plus time for discussion up to 1 hour.

  • Todd Braisted — Raising the Legion
  • Todd Braisted — Early Actions
  • Wayne Lynch — Legion Comes South — Reputation Rising
  • Wayne Lynch — Losing Streak
  • Todd Braisted — North Carolina, Virginia, and Surrender

As usual, there is no charge for registration or attendance.
Registration Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Am-W-WkMTBeoIpzH8v0Xrg

Ben Franklin’s World: The Great Dismal Swamp
The name “Great Dismal Swamp” doesn’t evoke an image of a pleasant or beautiful place, and yet, it was an important place that offered land speculators the chance to profit and enslaved men and women a chance for freedom in colonial British America and the early United States.
Marcus Nevius, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island and author of City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Maroonage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763-1856, has offered to guide us into and through the Great Dismal Swamp and its history.
During our journey through the swamp, Marcus reveals information about the Great Dismal Swamp and how it came by its “dismal” name; Details about maroons and the differences between petit and grand maroonage; And the many roles the Great Dismal Swamp played in enslaved peoples’ resistance to slavery. Listen in…

JAR: The Aborted Virginia Campaign and Its Aftermath, May to August 1781
by Ian Saberton 23 November 2020
Lt. General Earl Cornwallis, the British general officer commanding in the south, arrived at Petersburg in the morning of May 20, 1781, having marched from Wilmington, North Carolina at the close of the winter campaign. Under his command were his own corps of 1,780 men, Major General Phillips’ (now dead) of 3,500, and a reinforcement of 1,700 currently arriving from New York. Opposed to him on the north side of the James River was a Continental corps of a little over 800 rank and file under Major General the Marquis de Lafayette, supported by militia. On June 10 it would be joined by about the same number of the Pennsylvania line under Brig. General “Mad” Anthony Wayne and on the 19th by 450 Continentals newly raised in Virginia by Major General Friedrich Wilhelm August von Steuben.
Cornwallis did not stay at Petersburg for long. Within four and a half days he had crossed the James River—two miles wide—at Westover, and while awaiting the passage of the bulk of his combined corps, he dispatched Major General Alexander Leslie, with a reinforcement, to command the garrison at Portsmouth. Then, having dislodged Lafayette from the vicinity of Richmond, he moved to Hanover Courthouse before crossing the South Anna River. Advancing slowly towards the Point of Fork, which lay some forty-five miles west of Richmond, he detached Lt. Colonel John Graves Simcoe with his Queen’s Rangers to destroy the arms and stores there while at the same time dispatching Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton and his British Legion on the Charlottesville raid to disturb the revolutionary assembly and also wreak destruction. Read more…

Borealia: Settler colonial violence and the Maritime fisheries
Borealia by Angela Tozer 23 November 2020
Canadian settler colonialism set the stage for the current attacks on Mi’kmaw fishers from Sipekne’katik First Nation. From the end of summer and into the fall of 2020, settler fishers argued that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) needed to circumscribe Mi’kmaw fishers in favour of commercial Nova Scotia fisheries. The DFO uses a system of licensing to manage commercial fisheries. At the same time, settler fishers waged a campaign of terror against Mi’kmaw fishers. They even managed to have an unspoken embargo placed on Mi’kmaq caught lobster. Asking the Canadian government to regulate Mi’kmaw fishers and fisheries assumes that the Canadian government has the legal authority to do so. It is unclear what historical evidence this assumption is based on.
Shiri Pasternak argues that resource disputes in the Canadian settler state are “over the authority to have authority. The conflict concerns jurisdiction.” She aptly points out the gap between the settler state’s claim as the only sovereign over both Indigenous peoples and their territories, “and its legal authority to exercise territorial jurisdiction.” Jurisdiction, she writes “is the apparatus through which sovereignty is rendered meaningful.” This captures the heart of the fisheries dispute: the settler state claims sovereignty over the Mi’kmaw territory, Mi’kma’ki, without the legal precedent to do so. Arguably, the licensing system was one legal mechanism that extended settler government jurisdiction over natural resources, which, in turn, reified settler state sovereignty over that space.
Audra Simpson’s concept of “embedded sovereignties” is useful in helping Canadians, such as myself, understand the reality of the multiplicity of sovereign Indigenous nations within Canada’s claimed geographical borders. Specific historical processes enabled the Canadian settler state to assert its domain. Read more…

The Queen’s Wedding Gown
From last week’s Loyalist Trails, there is a book “The Gown” by Jennifer Robson that members might enjoy. It’s fiction, but with input from a woman who actually sewed the beading on the gown’s train and met the Queen when she came to the design house for a fitting.
Joanne Arbour

Nathan Tidridge Awarded The Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Teaching
He is among six educators from across Canada to receive this prestigious award.
“All across Canada, history champions are working with passion and commitment to bring to life the diverse stories of Canada. From historians and educators to authors, curators, volunteers and more, the recipients of the 2020 Governor General’s History Awards are exploring and engaging with the past in vital, innovative and exciting ways. These history makers inspire us all to learn more about each other – and about ourselves. Thanks to them, the past has a right future in Canada” from the in exurb accompanying today’s announcement.
You can meet the 2020 Governor General’s Award History Recipients at Canadashistory.ca/Awards.
Bev. Balch UE

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

  • Johann Leonard Scratch (Kratz) – contributed from Branch records by Jo Ann Tuskin
  • Nicholas Sewell – contributed Branch records by Jo Ann Tuskin
  • Alexander Smythe – contributed by Kevin Wisener
  • Francis Stephenson – contributed by Guylaine Petrin
  • Dudley Wells – contributed by Kevin Wisener

An error last week: The contribution for Paul Trumpour should have been Mark Trumpour. Apologies
Please help us build the directory by contributing more information for it. Contact loyalist.trails@uelac.org for instructions and guidance.

Where in the World is ????

“Royal Audience” … Where in the world is Someone?

If you have a photo, check if it qualifies and please submit to the editor loyalist.trails@uelac.org

From the Twittersphere and Beyond

Published by the UELAC
If you do not now receive this free newsletter directly but would like to, you can subscribe here.