Loyalist Trails Newsletter 2020-50 (December 20, 2020)

In this issue:

  • Loyalist Christmas 1808: Part Two of Two by Stephen Davidson UE
  • Atlantic Loyalist Collections: Loyalist Borderlands on Campobello Island: The Ordeal of Gillam Butler, Part Three
  • JAR: Women of Revolutionary War Georgia
  • Wilson Williams, Fourth Son of Patriarch Samuel by Phil Eschbach
  • Borealia: Thomas Davies and other British military artists in the Atlantic theater of war, 1757-1758
  • JAR: Book: Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution
  • Ben Franklin’s World: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 2: 1620 and Beyond
  • National Trust for Canada: Five Passport Places celebrating the holidays differently this year
  • I Share Loyalist Trails
  • Niagara-on-the-Lake Wins Prince of Wales Prize
  • Query: Did my Family Own Slaves?
  • Response to Query: Locate Reid’s Loyalists in Ontario
  • Resource: The Loyalists of Cape Breton
  • Loyalist Directory Notes: Unexpected Relationships
  • Additions to the Loyalist Directory
  • The Loyalist Gazette Status
  • From the Twittersphere and Beyond
  • Last Post: MILLER UE, Marian Isabelle (1939 — 2020)

 

 

Connect with us:

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

Loyalist Christmas 1808: Part Two of Two by Stephen Davidson UE
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
Thanks to Clarence Ward’s love of history we have a detailed description of how Christmas was celebrated by one very prosperous Loyalist family in Saint John, New Brunswick 212 years ago. Clarence was the grandson of one of the city’s most prominent Loyalist settlers and a son of that Loyalist’s youngest son. Drawing on stories that he heard from his relatives over the years, Clarence was able to give the readers of the 1898 edition of The New Brunswick Magazine a thorough account of how one upper class Loyalist family observed December 25th in 1808.
We have met the Ward family in the previous portions of this series. In December of 1808, Major John Ward was 55 years old; his wife Elizabeth was 56. Gathered around their dining room table were the six Ward children who on this particular holiday ranged in age from 30 to 17. A week earlier the family would have celebrated John Junior’s 25th birthday. He was the son born in 1783 in a canvas army tent shortly after his parents and older brother Caleb arrived in what was then Parrtown.
There is no mention of a Christmas tree or presents in Clarence Ward’s account of a Loyalist Christmas. The focus of the holiday was very much the gathering of family and friends around a sumptuous feast. In the early weeks of December, those who lived in Saint John kept an eye out for farmers from the Kennebecasis River Valley or the St. John River Valley who brought game into the city to sell to those who could not hunt for their own food.
Clarence opened his account of a Loyalist Christmas with a memory of his father, just 17 in 1808, being sent off by Major Ward to see what one visiting farmer had in his saddlebags. By the end of the transaction, the prosperous Loyalist had purchased “two geese, a fine turkey and several pairs of chickens and partridges”.
Major Ward’s cook, an enslaved Black woman named Dinah, had been amassing food for the Christmas dinner for weeks. She had collected moose meat and caribou in addition to ham and beef. The root cellar was stocked with turnips, potatoes and other vegetables. Meanwhile in the kitchen, the staff prepared cakes, pies, puddings, custards, nuts, apples and “other good things” to complement the feast.
Doughnuts were a particular holiday treat. It was “the king of the feast, fat, juicy and crisp, well cooked and wholesome.” Older citizens of Saint John were known to carry doughnuts in their pockets, eating them “at all sorts of unseasonable hours… some of the old families …made them by the barrel”.
Richard, a Black man enslaved by the Wards for many years, made sure that the family had plenty of Madeira, port, sherry, wine, cordials, and rum stored in another portion of the cellar. While many toasts would be made during the Christmas dinner, Clarence was quick to inform his readers that “over indulgence was not encouraged, and an intemperate person was as much avoided as at the present time”.
Christmas morning was busy, but not with the opening of presents and stockings. Instead, it was customary to attend a morning worship service, and as the Wards were Anglicans, they prepared to sit in their family pew at Trinity Anglican Church.
Meanwhile, in other parts of Saint John, those who had not been able to buy a turkey from a local farmer could attend an event that would be sure to raise more than one 21st century eyebrow. Armed with flint muskets that had been used during the Revolution over a quarter of a century ago, young men attended a turkey shoot in an open field. For sixpence or a shilling per shot, the participants could shoot at the heads of live turkeys that had been buried up to their necks in the snow at a distance of 30 or 40 yards. Those who were the better marksmen often went home with two or three turkeys.
Given the cold of Trinity Anglican’s sanctuary, the Rev. Mather Byles delivered his Christmas morning message wearing gloves that their finger tips removed and had a fur coat on under his surplice. The rector, it seems, did not approve of stoves or “any manner of heating” in the church during the winter. Nevertheless, it was often the job of the youngest boy in a household to carry a pan of live coals to the church ahead of the service to warm up the space beneath the family pew. When Major Ward became a warden of Trinity, a committee was struck to report upon the practicality of placing stoves in the church, so perhaps this “tradition” of chilly Christmas sermons did not last too long.
Upon returning home (and presumably after taking advantage of a fireplace to warm oneself), the Loyalist family prepared themselves for the Christmas dinner. Gathered around the Wards’ table were the members of the extended family. “including those who had married and gone out of the household, and their children of befitting age, and also two or three old friends and comrades who had remained single and had not homes or families of their own to make merry with“.
The holiday feast began at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. There could be upwards of five different kinds of meat to enjoy as well as a wide selection of desserts. No wonder that “kind, good humour, mirth and jollity were the order of the day” for the guests at the Wards’ table.
When the eating was done, the young people excused themselves and gathered in an adjoining room “with the matrons” and “made merry” by playing games and dancing minuets or reels. The older guests, meanwhile, went around the table and in turn made toasts to one another. This was always done with “due gravity and decorum, any flippancy on the part of the younger members being severely frowned at.”
Adult entertainment following the toasts could be a game of whist or joining in with the dancing young people. Clarence described his grandparents, John and Elizabeth Ward, on one occasion when they took to the dance floor. Major Ward “in his blue tail coat, high collar behind nearly reaching to the crown of his head, bright metal buttons— those behind in the middle of his back— with knee breeches, silk stockings and pumps, and {Mrs. Ward} in her old fashioned short-waisted black silk gown, with lace collar and cuffs, and mittens, (without fingers) of knitted silk on her hands.”
Christmas 1808 came to an end at midnight. The guests bundled themselves up in shawls and furs as they waited for their horse-drawn sleighs to come to the door. For those in the Ward family, it had been another day to enjoy the warm hospitality of their Loyalist elders. For those “below stairs” in the kitchen and scullery, it was a day of pride, knowing that their efforts had once again upheld the reputation of Major Ward’s house “for gastronomic superiority”. Clarence recorded that the cook’s greatest reward was having his grandfather turn to her at the end of the Christmas meal to say “Well done, Dinah!”
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

Atlantic Loyalist Collections: Loyalist Borderlands on Campobello Island: The Ordeal of Gillam Butler, Part Three
Richard Yeomans 16 Dec. 2020
Exactly when Gillam Butler acquired his estate on Campobello Island is uncertain, but there are clues that suggest he was never a destitute loyalist refugee, but rather an opportunistic New Englander who saw the border and a major financial opportunity. Following Sheriff Wyer’s first notice of auction of Butler’s Campobello property in the Royal Gazette, David Owen published his concerns in the Saint John Gazette as to the legality of Wyer’s position to auction off Butler’s seized estates on Campobello. David Owen was the nephew of British naval officer, William Owen, whose service in the Seven Years’ War awarded him title of Passamaquoddy Outer Island in 1767, later renamed Campobello. Three of Captain Owen’s nephews (including David) were listed as grantees because the total acreage of Campobello (about 10,000 acres) exceeded the amount normally awarded to an officer at the rank of captain. According to L. K. Ingersoll’s entry on William Owen in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Owen embarked from Liverpool, England in 1770 “with 38 indentured servants of all trades who were intended to form the nucleus of the new settlement.” Given Butler’s intention to embark for England, as opposed to the United States, at the height of his evading of officials in New Brunswick, it seems possible that Butler was once one of Owen’s indentured settlers: returning to a familiar place, with friends and relatives that he could fall back on, this hypothesis fits well with much of the scholarship on social networks in the eighteenth century. Read more…

JAR: Women of Revolutionary War Georgia
by Robert Scott Davis 17 December 2020
The September 3, 2020 issue of the Journal of the American Revolution published “Margaret Eustace and Her Family Pass Through the American Revolution.” Margaret Eustace, the suspected female spy with a colorful colonial past, showed up in Georgia in 1779 and apparently misrepresented her considerable real family connections in the American and British armies. Eustace survived the war and even prospered. Her friend Catherine Moore left her home near Savannah to Eustace and her son Col. John Skey Eustace. Why Moore made such a gift is unknown, but she surely found in her a similar life of challenges as a wife made worse by war.
Records of women during the American Revolution, even of the higher social status like Eustace and Moore, are scarce. Often a wife’s birth surname has not survived or even her given name. Sometimes they only appear in records of probate or in the legal formality of renouncing their dower when husbands sold land. Married women suffered because of being legally bound to their husbands and, as with all civilians, of being targets of violence when war was waged. Many women were left with nothing, such as those who lost brothers, husbands, and sons killed or executed among the Quakers and friendly neighbors in Georgia’s Wrighstborough community when rebel raiders destroyed the largely-Loyalist settlement. While Georgia became a battlefield for the American, British, and French armies, even more men died from Americans killing Americans—patriots versus Loyalists—to the extent that murdering prisoners came to cynically be called granting a “Georgia parole.” Read more…

Wilson Williams, Fourth Son of Patriarch Samuel
By Phil Eschbach
Wilson Williams, patriarch Samuel’s fourth son, was born in Anson County, North Carolina about 1749. His wife was Elizabeth (unknown maiden name, possibly Kirkland). In 1775, while Wilson and his father Samuel were visiting a neighbor, thirty armed men surrounded the home, intent on capturing them. Samuel narrowly escaped; however, Wilson was captured. Wilson was forced to swear allegiance to the American cause but subsequently fought for the loyalists anyway. After the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge, he and his family moved to Florida where he joined the East Florida Rangers under Colonel Brown. Wilson participated in raids made by the Rangers into Georgia and the Carolinas during the Revolution. He fought at the Battle of Thomas Creek in 1777, near present day Jacksonville. He was 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 enemy rebels. At the end of hostilities, he settled on a plantation at the mouth of Doctor’s Lake, sometimes known as Doctor’s Lagoon, just northwest of St. Augustine. The 1783 census listed him as married with one child (probably William Henry.) It also stated that he owned two slaves, one horse and three cows. At first, he was undecided as to whether to leave or to stay in Florida when it reverted to Spain.
In the 1784 census he stated that he had a wife and one son, two slaves, one horse and three cows with calves, basically the same as the previous year’s census. He then joined the revived East Florida Rangers, designed to keep order in the North Florida area between the St. Johns and St. Marys Rivers during the transition of Florida to Spain. The unit was headed by William Young, a loyalist from Pennsylvania. In the same unit were Wilson’s brother William, nephew Samuel (the younger), brothers-in-law Drury Fort and Nathaniel Ashley, and nephew, William Ashley. He eventually decided to move just across the border to St. Marys, Georgia, where he obtained three land grants there of 200 and 150 acres in 1789, and another 200 acres in 1797. His father Samuel and brothers William and Henry had abandoned Doctor’s Lake by 1786, moving separately to London and the Bahamas.
Wilson was joined in St. Marys by his other brother Abner and his sisters, Jane Ashley and Susan Fort and their families. In 1788, he was elected sheriff of Camden County. As such he would have had the unfortunate task of arresting his sister’s husband, Nathaniel Ashley, for the murder of Henry O’Neal, a Spanish official, who was sent across the border into Georgia to investigate the rustling of cattle in Florida by the accused Ashley. They got into a fight during which O’Neal was killed. After the murder, Nathaniel escaped to Beaufort, South Carolina. Wilson joined the Georgia militia as a sergeant, serving under Lieutenant John Gray in 1793. This militia was called out several times to fight Indians in the area. He raised his family there and died in 1803.
Wilson’s son William Henry married Jane Church. William Henry had inherited a portion of the plantation at Spring Garden (now called DeLeon Springs) from his uncle William Williams in 1807, which he sold to his cousins in 1813. He died sometime before 1823. Wilson had five other children, all daughters. Esther, Christiana, Hetty, Harriett, and Rebecca, all born in Camden County, Georgia. Esther married Rigdon Brown and they moved down into central Florida. Christiana married David Jones and Rebecca married Joshua Hickman.
ENDNOTES

  • “East Florida Papers,” archives at Smathers’ Library.
  • Feldman, Lawrence H. The Last Days of British Saint Augustine, 1784-1785. Baltimore: Clearfield Co., 1998.
  • Vocelle, James T. History of Camden County, Georgia. St. Marys, Georgia: Camden Printing Co., 1989.

 

Borealia: Thomas Davies and other British military artists in the Atlantic theater of war, 1757-1758
Denis Robillard 14 December 2020
In the spring of 2015, a watercolor dated to 1762 entitled An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara was sold at a Christie’s auction house in London for the stunning price of $217,000. The painting is one of the earliest works by Thomas Davies, an artillery gunner who did several tours of duty in North America, including Nova Scotia in 1758. Davies’ works, along with those of other highly trained military artists of the period, are some of the earliest views and records of early British history in Canada. Thomas Davies’ role as an iconographer of colonial North America, and the aesthetic quality of his work, which combined training in topographical images with self-taught talent, make him an important Canadian artist.
Thomas Davies was born in Kent in 1737 to a Welsh family. He became a professional soldier after a brief stint as a cadet at the Royal Military College at Woolwich. Opened in 1741, Woolwich was the first tertiary school to furnish advanced engineering and scientific courses to prospective officers and artillery engineers. Within a span of a few years, academy graduates like Davies became well versed in weapons training, fortifications, topography, road works, harbors and canal systems. They honed their painting skills there too, with both cartographical and meteorological training. Each student was expected to excel at various drawing techniques before graduation. Read more…
JAR: Book: Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution
Author: by T. Cole Jones (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
Reviewed by Kelly Mielke 16 December 2020
T. Cole Jones provides an innovative study of the treatment of prisoners of war during the Revolution. The book traces the evolution of prisoner treatment and studies the interplay between the political war and military action. Furthermore, Jones highlights how vengeful demands at the popular level—from people at all levels of society—influenced the actions of elite politicians. Not only does this systematic and in-depth study of prisoners fill a gap in the Revolution’s scholarship, it also presents a well-evidenced and convincing argument that the character of the war in fact hinged on the treatment of prisoners.
According to Jones, the treatment of prisoners proved to be the very catalyst that escalated the war to a conflict truly revolutionary in nature. While Americans intended to uphold the tenets of civilized European warfare, the experimental republican style of government meant the removal the war’s control from the elite and placement of it into the hands of everyday citizens. The increasing tendency of violent retaliation from individuals across the social spectrum forced politicians to reconsider the ways in which they handled prisoners. As Jones observes, the refusal of Parliament to accord American combatants legitimacy, combined with the civil war character of the war in America as well as the government’s failure to establish a monopoly on violence, spurred the war’s transformation from a conflict over colonial self-determination into a truly revolutionary conflict. Read more…
Ben Franklin’s World: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 2: 1620 and Beyond
Before New England was New England, it was the Dawnland. A region that remains the homeland of numerous Native American peoples, including the Wampanoag.
When the English colonists arrived at Patuxet 400 years ago, they arrived at a confusing time. The World of the Wampanoag people had changed in the wake of a destabilizing epidemic.
This episode is part of a two-episode series about the World of the Wampanoag. In Episode 290, we investigated the life, cultures, and trade of the Wampanoag and their neighbors, the Narragansett, up to December 16, 1620, the day the Mayflower made its way into Plymouth Harbor.
In this episode, our focus will be on the World of the Wampanoag in 1620 and beyond. We speak with Darius Coombs, Director of Wampanoag and Algonquin Interpretive Training at the Plimoth Patuxet Museums and a citizen of the Mashpee-Wampanoag nation; Carla Pestana, author of The World of Plymouth Plantation; Jade Luiz, Curator of Collections at Plimoth Patuxet Museums and a historical archaeologist; and Andrew Lipman, an Associate Professor of History at Barnard College and the author of the forthcoming book The Death and Life of Squanto. Listen in…

National Trust for Canada: Five Passport Places celebrating the holidays differently this year
Need some holiday cheer? Read on for some holiday events hosted at Passport Places in Canada. From classic Victorian Christmases and drag performances enjoyed virtually to Santa photographs with pets taken outside, we’re all adjusting our holiday events this year. Enjoy.

  • Dundurn Castle, Hamilton, ON
  • Dalnavert Museum and Visitors’ Centre, Winnipeg, MB
  • Gulf of Georgia Cannery, Richmond, BC
  • Annandale House, Tillsonburg, ON
  • Lougheed House, Calgary, AB

Read more…

I Share Loyalist Trails
Hello, Editor Doug. I read this timely story – JAR: The Revolutionary Language and Behavior of the Whiskey Rebels – with a great deal of interest because the issue is being echoed right now. This morning in the New York Times there’s much discussion about the role of the Electoral College in representing the actual wishes of the electorate (perhaps more than you want to know).
On a personal level, I found myself faltering while trying to explain the E.C. to my Canadian relatives, since my own early history education (in Ontario) included very little about U.S. political development, and the curriculum has only recently begun to broaden it’s scope in both countries.
Consequently, I share ‘Loyalist Trails” with anyone who starts a conversation about history. Yes, that’s an endorsement …
Lorna Jones

Niagara-on-the-Lake Wins Prince of Wales Prize
I was thrilled to see in last week’s issue of Loyalist Trails that The Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake Wins 2020 Prince of Wales Prize
It is where my Freel family settled. John Freel was a member of the Indian Dept. of Butler’s Rangers, and his wife Deborah is buried in Butler’s Burial Ground. I have visited the town several times and always feel a sense of belonging there. It is a beautiful place.
Toni Cummings

Query: Did my Family Own Slaves?
Thank you for including the article called “The Slave in Canada” in the Loyalist Trails newsletter dated December 13, 2020-49. I was really hoping to see my family’s name in it one way or the other; it wasn’t. The surname is Jenkins. The War of 1812 hero John Jenkins, as you probably know was born in Kingsclear, York County, New Brunswick.
His Loyalist parents fled Georgia after the American Revolution, and in the end, wound up in New Brunswick (King’s County). I have been trying to figure out for a long time if they brought their slaves with them to New Brunswick, or if they were confiscated in Georgia, or if they freed or sold them in Georgia. There might not be a record of John Jenkins’ father (also named John Jenkins) owning slaves, but his mother who was the former Sarah Bradley inherited one or some from her deceased first husband who died in one of the Savannah battles, in 1780.
After her husband’s death, Sarah next married Lt. John Jenkins of the New Jersey Volunteers in 1781. Together with Sarah’s 10 year old twin boys made their way north, and landed in New Brunswick with the other soldier/settlers. There, they had John Jenkins, the War of 1812 War Hero. I descend from one of the twin boys mentioned; Captain William Brown Bradley, also a Captain in the War of 1812 (100th Reg. of Foot).
So anyways, I have been trying to find out if the Jenkins family of New Brunswick had slaves. Thank you.
Karen Prytula – karenprytula33@gmail.com – lives in Carleton Place, just a few miles away from where Cap. W. B. Bradley settled, with his wife Catherine Clements who was born in New York before her family fled to New Brunswick as well.

Response to Query: Locate Reid’s Loyalists in Ontario
Regarding the query from Jo Ann Tuskin in the last Loyalist Trails, W.D. Reid’s (print) book The Loyalists in Ontario is still in the catalogue of the Genealogical Publishing Company: https://genealogical.com/store/. Other readers may be interested as well. I believe GPC bought out Hunterdon House Publishing years ago. The price seems to reflect that the book has no doubt been long out of print. That’s not to say you can’t find it in various online sites!
Brenda Dougall Merriman, CG Emeritus

Resource: The Loyalists of Cape Breton
While developing content for the Loyalist Directory, Andrew Payzant came across an article by Robert J Morgan, “The Loyalists of Cape Breton“, Dalhousie Review, vol. 55, issue 1, pp 5-22.
Pages numbered 5 through 15 are descriptions of some Loyalists including Daniel Watson and Lt Col John Peters, both of whom Andrew has contributed information (not yet posted). Daniel’s son William Watson married Lt.Col. John Peters’ daughter Ann Barnett Peters.
Pages numbered 16 through 22 contain a list of Loyalists – name, origin, settled in Cape Breton and other information (where available).
The document is from the Dalhousie Review – the journal is available to the public online at https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/handle/10222/59776

Loyalist Directory Notes: Unexpected Relationships
I recently began working with Doug Grant to expand the Loyalist Directory on the UELAC website, adding new Loyalists and adding information to ones already listed. Here is a story about two of these.
Rulof Rulofson in 1776 enlisted as a Private in the 6th New Jersey Volunteers and rose through the ranks, ending with a commission as an Ensign and who finally settled in Kings County, New Brunswick.
Walter Willett was from Pennsylvania, Lieutenant first in the Bucks County Light Dragoons and later in Col. Tarleton’s British Legion cavalry. His land grant was in Annapolis County, Nova Scotia.
Rulof married Mehitable, and Walter married Abigail, two daughters of Isaac Phinney, a pre-Loyalist “New England Planter” who came to Granville Township from Massachusetts around 1760, and whose roots go back to the Mayflower.
I am the 5th-great-grandson of Isaac Phinney though another daughter, Desire, so, much to my surprise, Rulof and Walter are both my 4th-great uncles by marriage!
Andrew Paysan

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

  • Seth Bangs a pilot with the navy, settled in Chester Nova Scotia – contributed by Andrew Payzant
  • Robert Bethel from Boston to Chester NS joined the King’s Orange Rangers – contributed by Andrew Payzant
  • Samuel Embree from Westchester NY to Cumberland County NS- contributed by Andrew Payzant
  • Benjamin Farrar from New York to Pinette, Prince Edward Island – contributed by Kevin Wisener
  • John Hench of Georgetown PEI – contributed by Kevin Wisener
  • Joshua Thomas from Northampton PA to Burton (Blissville), Sunbury Co, NB – from Branch records by Jo Ann Tuskin
  • Benjamin Willcox from Massachusetts to Suussex NJ to Grimsby, Lincoln, ON, contributed by Ted Olsen

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

The Loyalist Gazette Status
The Loyalist Gazette was mailed a week ago. Some were delivered in Toronto on Monday or Tuesday and a Belleville delivery on Tuesday and Montreal on Thursday were reported. As a UELAC member, if you requested a paper copy and have not received it, it should be in the mail.
The digital copy is in the members’ section at uelac.ca. Log in to see it there, and check your account to see if you requested a paper copy – one copy is sent to families, to the primary member. Contact your branch’s membership person if there is an issue.
As a member, enjoy this Fall issue.

From the Twittersphere and Beyond

  • This Week in History
  • Clothing and Related:
    • This #gloriousGeorgians “bird of paradise” brooch is a bit blingtastic! It’s embellished with diamonds and enamel and it’s utterly gorge.
    • Recent acquisition from @TheFanMuseum is this folding fan with carved ivory monture & vellum leaf painted, according to @fancurator, with Christ calling the Apostles. The decorative borders are most probably the work of a different artist. English (?), ca.1740s
    • A Robe à l’anglaise, 1763, American (of English fabric), silk plain weave taffeta patterned with supplementary wefts brocaded with polychrome silks. Worn by Sarah Tyng Smith when she married Richard Codman in Portland, Maine, Feb 23, 1763
    • 18th Century dress, sleeve and flounce detail, light blue silk damask most probably made in Spitalfields, silk dates from 1740’s but dress was constructed during 1760’s
    • 18th Century dress, Robe à la Française, White moire brocaded with red, purple, yellow & blue floral sprays, c.1750
    • I spent some of my last day in the Ulster Museum before Christmas packing away clothes from the Vice Versa exhibition. How amazing is the silk hand embroidery on the Belvedere Court Suit! The suit is from the 1780s, it’s French and is made from a satin weave silk.
    • 18th Century men’s Banyan – a robe for wearing at home. Silk satin with supplementary weft float patterning; lined with striped plain weave silk. c.1760
    • 18th Century men’s matching coat & waistcoat, 1760-1780, pinkish mauve silk coat, waistcoat and breeches in alternating diagonal weave, Worn by Thomas Carill-Worsley, who lived at Platt Hall
  • Townsends
  • Miscellaneous
    • Several people asked about nurdles earlier in the week. Nurdles are tiny pellets of plastic, about the size of a lentil. They’re the raw material used to make most plastic products. There are over 10,000 in this jar, all picked out of one tiny rockpool.
    • (Fake News) December 18, 1771, Samuel Adams visited Harrison Gray, Jr., to discuss something he understood Gray had told John Hancock that he (Adams) had said about him (Hancock), but really it was about something John Cotton had said about James Otis…

Last Post: MILLER UE, Marian Isabelle (1939 — 2020)
Col. John Butler (Niagara) Branch members are saddened to report the passing of Marian Isabelle Miller UE. Marian was a lifelong resident of Fort Erie and was a very proud descendant of her UE Loyalist ancestors; Andrew Miller; Cornelius Bowen and William Bowen. She was also a proud member of the Scottish Clan Lamont Society of Canada.
Marian served in the RCAF from 1959-1962 and as a Customs Officer from 1962 until her retirement in 1992. Marian was a life member of RCL 71 and a Charter member of RCAFA, Wing 484 Fort Erie.
She also enjoyed many a bingo at Uncle Sam’s Delta.
She was predeceased by her mother, Marguerite (Brown) Miller Hanratty UE (2017), father, Arthur A. Miller (1965) and brother Benjamin A. Miller UE (2012).
She is survived by her sister Arlene Barber (Albert) and their children, Andy, Valerie Costello (Tim), and David.
Arrangements entrusted to Williams Funeral Services — info@williamsfuneralservices.ca
Cremation has taken place. A private inurnment was held at McAffee Cemetery, Fort Erie.
Donations to a charity of your choice would be appreciated by her family.
Bev Craig UE, Col. John Butler Branch

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