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Loyalist Gazette Fall 2021 Issue: Paper Copies Have been Mailed
The Fall 2021 issue has been printed and was delivered to Canada Post on Monday 29 Nov. The contents of this new issue include:

  • The Samuel Williams Family
  • Adams Papst, Loyalist (Part 2)
  • What Happened to the Loyalists of Redding
  • Timothy Munro SUE and his Rebellion Boxes (Part 2)
  • Reflections of the Appointment of Mary Simon as Governor General
  • and much more

As previously noted, Members of UELAC can find the digital copy at uelac.ca in the “Members Section”.
The team hopes that you will enjoy.
Carl Stymiest, Chair, Communications Committee, Communications@uelac.org

Who’s In The Picture?
The UELAC Library & Archives has a multitude of unidentified photographs dating throughout the years of the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada. Some photos provide hints; others, none whatsoever.
With people not venturing out to events which might be the source for a “Where in the World” photo, here is a new challenge, and an opportunity to help improve the UELAC Archives.
Go to Who’s In The Picture (WitP). There are three photos taken at the the 1989 Royal Convention (May 18-22) at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, QC. Many of the people in the photos were probably members at that time, but could have been from branches near or far.
Do you recognize anyone?
If you know one or more, please send an email to Carl Stymiest, Leader of the Library and Archives Committee at communications@uelac.ca — please note the date and reference number of the photo and clearly indicate which person you are identifying. Any additional relevant comments are welcome, and appreciated.
Carl Stymiest

The Hanging of Hare and Newbury: Part One: The Official Reaction
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
The fate of a member of Butler’s Rangers, a Loyalist regiment based in Niagara, can be found in the personal journal of the rebel lieutenant Robert Parker. His entry for June 21, 1779 notes: This day was executed a spy called Henry Hare, who said he was a private in Colonel John Butler’s regiment. He was taken up by a party of militia at some distance from here, found guilty and hanged. Several others are in confinement.
This letter is the first in a series of documents from 1779 that chronicle the fates of Henry Hare and William Newbury — two Loyalist soldiers who were hanged as traitors in New York’s Cherry Valley. It is unusual for such a story to be told from so many official and individual sources.
In a letter that the Patriot General James Clinton wrote to his wife on July 6, 1779, he said, “I have nothing further to acquaint you of, except that we apprehended a certain Lieut. Henry Hare, and a Sgt. Newbury, both of col. Butler’s Regiment, who confessed that they left the Seneca country with sixty-three Indians and two white men… I had them tried by a general court martial for spies, who sentenced them both to be hanged, which was done accordingly at Canajoharie, to the satisfaction of all the inhabitants of that place, that were friends to their country, as they were known to be very active in almost all the murders that were committed on these frontiers. They were inhabitants of Tryon County, had each a wife and several children, who came to see them and beg their lives.”
Henry Snook was among those who helped to arrest William Newbury. In July of 1779, he wrote that “he volunteered with a number of Whigs to go and take one William Newbury and William Rombo {Wilham Rombauch} who were called British spies, and who were connected with one Harry Hare, a British spy; … and his company found Newberry and Rombo in the woods on the east side of Schoharie Creek in the town of Florida, and took them prisoners and surrendered them to Captain Snook and Major Newkirk. {He} then understood and believes that they were publicly executed at Canajoharie as British spies.”
The journal of the Loyalist Richard Cartwright described the situation somewhat differently. On July 6, 1779, he wrote: “This evening came in a Cachnawagoe Indian who has been long at Oneida… By what this man says, Lieutenant Henry Hare and Sergeant Newberry, who set off for Fort Hunter the 4th, will have had the misfortune to be taken by the enemy and hanged as spies. We have lost in Mr. Hare a very active enterprising officer and the manner of his death is shocking.”
On the following day, John Butler, commander of the two executed men, wrote a letter to one of his colonels. “One piece of intelligence I am much distressed at. By what these Indians say, Lieutenant Henry Hare and Sergeant Newberry have had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the rebels and were executed along with some other man who was taken with them. They left this the 4th of last month to go to Fort Hunter. I hope the account may not be true. ”
On the 23rd, a letter of Butler’s noted that a prisoner in his custody “confirms the account of the fate of Mr. Hare and Sergeant Newberry and says they were hanged after being kept prisoner a few days.”
In August, Walter Butler, John’s son, gave his reaction to the execution of Hare and Newbury. He warned that those Loyalists who served on the frontier should be made of aware of what could happen “in case they should be so unfortunate as to fall into the enemy’s hands, which will fully appear by the fate of Mr. Henry Hare, an officer in the Indian Department and Sergeant Newberry of the Rangers met with, taken on a scout to Otsego Lake. They were no sooner taken, but immediately executed. Likewise, a gentleman sent by Sir Henry Clinton to Colonel Butler with dispatches was taken on his return from Colonel Butler and immediately executed.
The conduct of every officer, both of the Rangers and Indian Department, in exerting themselves on every occasion to preserve the lives of prisoners taken, and also to treat them well, particularly at Wyoming and Cherry Valley last campaign… should set the rebels an example if there were men possessed of humanity and common justice to do the like. As these instances have had the contrary effect, some method should be taken to restrain the rebels from such acts of barbarism, or they will be under the necessity of doing themselves justice.”
A day later, General Frederick Haldimand wrote to the British brigadier general, Henry Watson Powell, concerning some rebel officers that were incarcerated in Canada. “It is currently reported that the rebels have executed a Lieutenant Henry Hare of the Indian Department at … Albany. I must request that you will endeavour to inform yourself of the truth of the report, and if it should appear to you to be authentic, that you will send the rebel officers down under a strong guard, giving them to understand that since their people persist in violating the laws of humanity, not only by cruel usage of their prisoners, but even putting them to death, those of them who fall into our hands must, as long as their enormities are committed by them, expect a similar treatment.”
Powell later reported to Haldimand that he had received verification of the executions of Hare and Newbury, having read it in a rebel newspaper.
The hanging of two of Butler’s rangers underscored a crucial difference in the way that the opposing sides in the American Revolution perceived one another. While the Patriots saw British soldiers as members of another nation, they considered Loyalists to be traitors to their new republic and were therefore to be hanged rather than merely imprisoned. The British treated their American captives as prisoners of war and did not execute them. This explains the alarm and indignation over “such acts of barbarism” expressed in the letters of Loyalist and British officers — as well as the smug righteousness of the Patriot leaders who felt more than justified in hanging men “to the satisfaction of all the inhabitants“. The fact that Hare and Newbury were neighbours to “the inhabitants” in the years leading up to the American Revolution seemed to have no bearing on their sentencing whatsoever.
Despite the details provided by the personal journals and official correspondence surrounding these executions, the documents do not flesh out the stories of Hare and Newbury. While they reveal the reaction of the military, they neglect to mention the impact of the men’s deaths on their wives and children. Were their executions truly justified?
To learn the story behind the hanging of two New York Loyalists, other documents must be consulted. Their contents will be revealed in the next two editions of Loyalist Trails.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

Book: Index to Monetary Claims by American Loyalists
A New Index to Audit Office 13
By William Bruce Antliff
Published by Global Heritage Press, Ottawa, 2021
The first complete and comprehensive nominal Index of Audit Office 13 (AO13) claims & documents
Unlike earlier published indexes and a current online index of Audit Office 13 (AO13), this New Index to AO13 is complete, accurate and designed so researchers can easily use it to identify all records pertaining to specific persons. It can be used to quickly find documents both on microfilm, and in the scanned images of AO13 documents on Ancestry.com. Comparing the results of using this New Index versus using the AO13 search box results in Ancestry, showed that Ancestry’s indexing of AO13 is very incomplete. This New Index provides the ability to quickly and easily locate documents concerning specific people within Ancestry’s scanned AO13 collection.
What is Audit Office 13 (AO13) and why is the collection important?
The subject of the index published in this 450 page tome is a huge collection of documents in the form of loose folios that are archived in the National Archives in London, England. The title of the collection is Audit Office 13, (normally abbreviated to AO13). The documents were collected and produced by a number of British commissions that examined monetary claims by American colonists who claimed to remain loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolution (United Empire Loyalists).
The indexed documents within AO13 include claims, rejections, approvals, correspondence, supporting documentation, details of claimants’ activities during the American Revolution, lists, and any documentation related to loyalty and the claim. The depth of information and number of documents varies by claimant.
This Index dramatically expands on and corrects the work of others
Available from Global Genealogy.
See “Index to Monetary Claims…” for more details and ordering information.

JAR: The Two Sieges of Louisbourg: Harbingers of American Discontent
by David O. Stewart 30 November 2021
When they heard the news in 1757, some New Englanders smirked. Others grew angry.
The British were mounting a major expedition against the powerful French fortress at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, next to Nova Scotia. Sometimes called “the Gibraltar of the North,” Louisbourg was the key to the French empire in North America. New Englanders had seized it a decade before, but then the British gave it back in a peace settlement, tossing the fortress away. Now the British had to capture it all over again.
In 1757, Britain and France were at war for the third time in sixty years. When the previous conflict—the War of the Austrian Succession—spread to North America, Louisbourg loomed as the gateway to New France. Built over a twenty-five-year period, the stone walls of the fortress reached thirty feet high, spread thirty-six feet thick at their base, and boasted defensive embankments, ditches, angled fields of fire, and artillery batteries.
Ships sheltered in Louisbourg’s large harbor could command access to the St. Lawrence River, which rose from the Great Lakes in the heart of the continent, then flowed past Montreal and Quebec.

Round One
In the previous decade, British war planners had ignored Louisbourg when conflict with France spread across Europe, through the rich sugar colonies of the Caribbean, even in the Indian Ocean. When the war began in 1744, North America did not rank high on London’s agenda.
But for New Englanders, the French fortress threatened trade, fishing, even survival, while the French Catholic faith stirred deep religious hostility…

Round Two
Having learned that their massive fortress could be taken, the French rebuilt it and strove to improve its harbor defenses. After only a few years of peace, the old rivals slid back into their global struggle for dominance. After the Seven Years’ War was declared in 1756, the British targeted Louisbourg. The large harbor on Cape Breton Island still could shelter warships that disrupted fishing on the Grand Banks and intercepted coastal traders that were essential to colonists in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Read more…

JAR: The Fruits of Victory: Loyalist Prisoners in the Aftermath of Kings Mountain
by William Caldwell 2 December 2021
The Battle of Kings Mountain was fought on October 7, 1780 in the upcountry of South Carolina near the border with North Carolina. As the gunsmoke dissipated and Patriot officers rallied their men, they found themselves victorious and in possession of the mountain-top; but still in danger. British General Charles, Lord Cornwallis and his army were only thirty-five miles to the east at Charlotte, North Carolina, and the Patriots knew that the now-deceased British Major Patrick Ferguson had sent numerous requests for reinforcements over the week prior. The frontier Patriots still had a long way to go before they would return to their settlements in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and beyond in the Overmountain settlements. Their return journey seemed even more daunting due to the fact they were now burdened with roughly 700 Loyalist prisoners. What were they to do with so many prisoners? Where could they safely house these men away from British rescue? The fate of these 700 Loyalists began forming the next day as the Patriots started retracing the long trail homeward.
The morning of Sunday October 8, the weary Patriot soldiers awoke on the ridge of Kings Mountain. They had slept on the battlefield as best they could amid rain and the sounds of wounded men, and had been busy gathering captured supplies and guarding their prisoners. The elected Patriot leader, Virginia Col. William Campbell, recorded capturing sixty-eight Loyalist provincials (uniformed soldiers mostly from New York and New Jersey) and 648 Loyalist militia (local men from the Carolinas) for a total of 716 prisoners, 163 of whom had injuries of varying severity. The Patriots gathered the captured equipment of the Loyalist army, disabled the muskets by removing the gun flints, and forced each prisoner to carry one, or sometimes two, of these captured weapons. Loyalist militia who were too wounded to travel were paroled by Patriot officers and left on the battlefield in the care of local people who had been drawn by the sounds of the previous day’s fight. Read more…

Health, Illness and Death: Textile Observations by 18th Century Travelling Naturalists
By Viveka Hansen 7 December 2020 at ikfoundation.org
This essay aims to look closer at ill health and traditions around the end of life in the context of clothing and various textiles — studied via travel journals and correspondence by Carl Linnaeus’ seventeen Apostles. Young men making natural history journeys to more than 50 countries over the period 1745 to 1799.
Several of these naturalists were trained physicians within their education, whilst a few worked onboard East India Company ships as surgeons where poor health and at times frequent deaths were a reality throughout the long sea voyages. Illnesses mentioned in correspondence, physician journals and diaries alike were consumption, falling sickness, the shivers, German measles, dysentery, gangrene, scurvy etc. Various sorts of linen, cotton and woollen cloths could assist in the healing for the patients. Even so, many times illnesses were contracted where no cures were known. To mention two of Carl Linnaeus’ (1707-1778) former students who died at a young age; Fredrik Hasselquist (1722-1752), doctor of medicine, died at the age of 30, in a village close to Smyrna (today Izmir) of consumption [tuberculosis], a very common disease as he had been infected with already before leaving Sweden. Whilst, Pehr Löfling (1729-1756) a few years later died in a mission in Guyana, Venezuela, of a ‘fever’ at the age of 27. Exactly what sort of fever is unknown, but the most common ailment in hot climates were either malaria, yellow fever or dysentery.
The ship’s physician or barber surgeon was an extremely important person onboard the ships bound for East India, the voyage usually lasting one and a half to two years but this one as studied from Carl Fredrik Adler’s (1720-1761) medical journal took more than three years. Alongside the sail makers and the carpenters, the doctor onboard was regarded as part of the category of especially essential and useful individuals. To aid him in his task, he had his medicine chest containing medicines, instruments and other crucial items for examinations and treatments. Read more…

Leith Award: Three Members Honoured with 2021 Awards
Established in 2006, the Vancouver Branch inaugurated the Phillip E. M. Leith Memorial Medal to be awarded annually to a person, from the Pacific Region, as recognition for their outstanding volunteer work on behalf of the association.
Read about each of this year’s recipients:

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there were no awards in 2020

Millinery and Interesting Facts in the 1700 and 1800s
By Geri Walton 23 September 2015
Head coverings have been with us since the time of man. Initially, they were seen as utilitarian because they offered protection from nature’s harsh elements or an enemy’s weapon. Some of the first headwear to be depicted was found in cave paintings at Lussac-les-Chateaux in Central France that dates to 15,000 BC. The next headwear to be depicted was skull-caps. These were followed by the Phrygian caps worn by freed slaves in Greece and Rome, which eventually became known as “Liberty Caps” during the French Revolution.
In the sixteenth century, woman’s hats at last attained structure, and, by the seventeenth century, women everywhere began to clamor for millinery. This resulted in the idea of millinery fashion, with women’s hats becoming extremely popular during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Read more…

For Members: Recordings of Presentations; Branch Newsletters
Presentations: Login at uelac.ca and in the Members’ Section, look for “Presentations to Branches”. Newly available:

  • “Loyalists of Digby, NS“, Brian McConnell UE presentation to Gov. Simcoe Branch on December 1, 2021. Well organized and with quality content, Brian briefly described early settlements – indigenous, French and English – and the arrival of the Loyalists, White and Black, and the challenges the Black Loyalists both enslaved and free faced.

Newsletters: Check out the shared newsletters

Upcoming Events:

Christmas Tours at the Nelles Manor Museum Dec 11, 12, 18, 19

Loyalist participants in and refugees from the American Revolution, the Nelles family settled in what is now Grimsby Ontario. The Nelles family built the Manor, now a museum. Read more…
The museum is offering Christmas tours – details about tour dates, times and ticketing

Friends of St. Alban’s: “A Christmas Carol” Sun. 12 Dec @3:00 & @7:00

On Sunday December 12th, the Friends of St Alban’s and the Lennox Community Theatre will stage a reading of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, adapted by Judy Maddren and directed by Andy Palmer. Afternoon 2 p.m. for performance at 3 p.m. and Evening 6:00 for 7:00, both followed by some friendly Christmas cheer.
Reservations: contact Alice Carlson at 613-373-2662 or aliceandjohn@xplornet.ca

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