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2022 UELAC Conference Presentation: “Tecumseh: A Reassessment of his Legacy for our Time”
Conference: “From Heartbreak to Hope in the Heart of the Continent”
May 25th to 29th, 2022. Hosted by Manitoba Branch, UELAC. Mark the dates.

The 2022 Dominion Conference Presentations: “Eclectic and Inclusive”.

Dr. Jarvis Brownlie will be presenting “Tecumseh: A Reassessment of his Legacy for our Time“.
Dr. Brownlie is a graduate of the University of Toronto and presently teaches Indigenous history at the University of Manitoba. His research has focussed on colonialism, Crown-First Nations relations, and Indigenous oral history.
He has done research and publication on treaties, the effects of Indian agents and racial issues.
He is presently engaged in collaborative research in Cree communities on the effects of Manitoba Hydro Dams on Indigenous communities.
More about Jarvis Brownlie, including a list of his publications.
Mary Steinhoff, Chair, 2022 Conference Planning Committee, Manitoba Branch

Hidden Vignettes of Black History in a Loyalist’s Letters
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
One of the great difficulties in piecing together Canada’s early Black history is the lack of primary sources generated by those who were of African descent. Instead, historians must rely on census records, deeds, probate records, and newspapers written by white contemporaries. The diaries and correspondence that have survived from the era of Loyalist settlement provide additional details concerning the lives of free Black Loyalists and enslaved Africans, but only as they had some impact on the white Loyalist who penned the personal records.
Edward Winslow, a Loyalist from a prominent Massachusetts family, settled in New Brunswick following the American Revolution. His correspondence with relatives and government officials during his first five years in the colony provides posterity with a glimpse into the reality of being Black in a Loyalist society.
Two letters written in the summer of 1783 demonstrate the uncertain world in which New Brunswick’s growing Black population would live.
In July of 1783, Winslow received a letter from his father, Edward Winslow Senior, which demonstrated how the Massachusetts family regarded human slaves as a normal aspect of everyday life. As his father outlined the family’s plans to move to Nova Scotia, he casually mentioned the fact that Winslow’s mother would be arriving with Hester and Daphne, two of the family’s three slaves. (Sadly, these women would be among a total of 15,000 enslaved Blacks that Loyalists took with them as they left the United States.)
Just a month earlier, Winslow had received a request from Lt. Col. Isaac Allen, another Loyalist who enslaved Blacks. However, Allen’s letter was written on behalf of a Black Loyalist family. Allen wanted Winslow to be sure that George and Ann Black, and their two children would receive the same provisions as white Loyalists, given that George had “long been free and was one of the brave fellows under the gallant Col. Tye“.
Titus Cornelius (aka Col. Tye) had escaped to freedom during the American Revolution and became the commanding officer of a guerrilla band that was comprised of 800 free Blacks and white Loyalists. Allen’s letter reveals the appreciation that the British had for the contributions of this Black Loyalist military leader and his men. And yet both Winslow and Allen had no difficulty in justifying the continuation of Black slavery in the years following the revolution.
In a letter that Winslow wrote to his wife Mary in September of 1784, he told how 300 Loyalist refugees had been removed from Britain and brought to Halifax. “Great numbers died on the passage of various disorders–the miserable remnant are landed here and have now no covering but tents. Such as are able to crawl are begging for a proportion of provisions at my door… Heaven only knows what will become of ’em. As soon as we get rid of such a set as these, another little multitude appears of old crippled Refugees, men and women who have seen better days.“
There was a Black component to these unwanted refugees. Winslow went on to say “Next to them perhaps comes an unfortunate set of Blackies begging for Christ’s sake that Masser would give ’em a little provision if it’s only for one week. “He wife sick; He children sick: and He will die if He have not some.“
At least Winslow saw all of the London refugees as equals in their shared misery. The sufferings of Blacks distressed him as much as those of the whites.
Winslow confided that he was haunted by this human misery: “It is not possible to relieve all their distresses. I long to retreat from such scenes.” How he addressed the concerns of these unwanted Loyalist refugees goes unrecorded.
Two months later, Winslow had the happier task of providing for the disbanded troops and civilian refugees who had settled along the St. John River in New Brunswick. In sending out a return to his superiors, Winslow noted that he had seen to the feeding and provisioning of 182 men, women, and children who were part of the Black Companies. (By 1791, a large number of these free Blacks turned their backs on New Brunswick to settle in Sierra Leone.)
Although he saw that Britain’s free Black supporters were fed and clothed in the new colony north of the Bay of Fundy, Winslow continued to be a slave-owner. In April of 1785, he wrote to a friend from Massachusetts outlining his plans for the construction of his New Brunswick home. His work force was comprised of Caesar, Frank and Juba, his three slaves. “I think they may be employed very advantageously in cutting wood & cultivating that part of the land which is cleared.”
Winslow described Frank “as good a man as any in the world” as well as “a tolerable carpenter & with proper directions will be able to cut the timber for the House-frame.” Caesar was “a very discreet fellow” and was trusted with operating the skiff that would carry building materials. Juba, however, was described as “a devil” who would be of more use as a builder than as a helper around the house with Winslow’s wife.
A letter written in the fall of 1787 from a Loyalist in New York to one in New Brunswick makes no reference to Winslow, but it outlines how two slaves were sent to New Brunswick to be sold. John Rapalje sent a woman named Eve and her child Suke (sic) to George Leonard “in order to dispose of them to the best advantage”. Eve was described as “an excellent hand at all sorts of house work except cooking, and one of the best servants for washing, we ever had; she is perfectly honest & sober, and the only fault she has, is her being near sighted.” Rapalje gave five names as references for those who knew Eve well and could prove that she was in fact his property.
Nothing more is said of Winslow’s three male slaves in his personal correspondence after 1785. However, his sister Sarah makes mention of one of her brother’s slaves in a 1788 letter. In inviting Ward Chipman, a family friend, to stay in her home, she promises him “a good bed and the man Caesar is well enough to be altogether devoted to you“. In other words, although he had been sick due to an unnamed illness, the trusted Caesar was charged with acting as a valet to Chipman during his time in Fredericton.
The white Loyalist settlers of New Brunswick were in the novel situation of living in a colony with a free Black population of over a thousand people. But despite this fact, they still regarded African Americans as a people to be enslaved. The correspondence of Edward Winslow reveals how Blacks occupied the lowest rung of early New Brunswick society. Those who came to the colony as slaves – and their children– would not be set free until the Slavery Abolition Act took effect throughout the British Empire on August 1, 1834.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

1793 Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada
The Canadian Encyclopedia
The 1793 Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada was the first legislation in the British colonies to restrict the slave trade. The Act recognized enslavement as a legal and socially accepted institution. It also prohibited the importation of new slaves into Upper Canada and reflected a growing abolitionist sentiment in British North America.
Catalyst to the Act
On 14 March 1793, United Empire Loyalist Sergeant Adam Vrooman violently bound Chloe Cooley, a Black woman he enslaved, with a rope. (See also Loyalists in Canada.) He was assisted by two other men — his brother Isaac Vrooman and one of the five sons of United Empire Loyalist McGregory Van Every. The men put Cooley in a boat and transported her across the Niagara River to sell her in New York State. Cooley resisted fiercely, but to no avail.
Cooley’s piercing scream alerted Peter Martin, a Black Loyalist formerly enslaved by John Butler, to what was transpiring.
Peter Martin, a veteran of Butler’s Rangers, along with witness William Grisley, reported the incident to Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe and the Executive Council of Upper Canada in Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario). Grisley, a white resident of nearby Mississauga Point and employee of Sergeant Vrooman’s, was able to provide a detailed account of the events as he was on the boat that transported Cooley but did not assist in restraining her.
Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe used the Chloe Cooley incident to introduce legislation to abolish slavery in Upper Canada. Read more…

Thomas Ganong from “Iola May (Northrup) Fisher: Her Story! 1866-1942”
By Barb Pearson & Robert Fisher
Although the article has information about Iola Fisher, much of it is about one of her ancestors, Thomas Ganong
Thomas Ganong: The Loyalist-From the Ganong Family History -1893
Of the life of Thomas Ganong before he came to New Brunswick in 1783, we know nothing, except that he was born in New York State, probably at Lake Mahopac, about 1745, that he married Joanna Barlow in New York State about 1775, and that three sons were born to them before they left the State. Even as to the part he took in the Revolution, if any, we have no information; and we can only infer from his subsequent history that he was one of that numerous class, the best of the best of the Loyalists, who while disapproving strongly of what was unquestionably unjust treatment of the American Colonies by Great Britain, nevertheless held that the way to redress their wrongs did not lie through revolt.
That Thomas Ganong came to New Brunswick as a Loyalist in 1783 is the universal tradition amongst his many descendants in New Brunswick; and that he came by the first or spring fleet, which reached Saint John in May, is not only likewise supported by tradition, but is confirmed by a paper left by the late John E. Ganong, a grandson of Thomas…
In New Brunswick Thomas Ganong settled as a farmer at Midland, Kings County. It is not known when he first broke ground there, but doubtless in 1784 or 1785. His grant, however, was not made until February 10, 1800, and it is numbered 356 in the Crown Lands Records. It was Lot No. 9 in the grant to Hezekiah Hoyt and others, and included 184 acres. As in many other cases, his farm was doubtless assigned him by lot long before the formal grant was issued. On this farm he lived until his death in 1810, after which it was occupied by his son Thomas until 1854, when it passed out of possession of the family…
The exact date of Thomas Ganong’s death is unknown, as the Kingston church records of this date have been lost, but it must have been in June or very early July 1810…
His wife, Joanna, survived until 1832. She died January 11, and was buried in Kingston church-yard beside her husband on January 13. After her husband’s death she lived with her son, Thomas, in the old homestead, and she is well remembered by some of her descendants…
The Children of Thomas Ganong
We have already spoken of the limitations of tradition. A remarkable example of this confronts us in the fact that none of the descendants of Thomas Ganong in New Brunswick have any knowledge or information as to his two elder sons mentioned in his will, John and Isaac…
James, the third son, was born in New York State in 1781. He was a farmer and received a grant of land from the Province of New Brunswick (No.610) on February 5, 1812…
Thomas Carleton, the fourth son, was born in 1785 at Kingston. He lived on the homestead with his father, and after his father’s death until 1854. He then removed with his wife to St. John, and lived there with his son…
In addition to the four sons, there was one daughter, though we do not know when or where she was born. Her name was Mary, though she was called Polly by her brothers. She married a sea captain named Roane. They sailed away on their first voyage and were never again heard from. It was supposed they had been taken by pirates.
The entire New Brunswick Branch of the family, then, is descended from James and Thomas Ganong. Read more…

Canada Post pays tribute to Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee
Canada Post is celebrating the 70-year reign – and platinum jubilee – of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II with a new commemorative stamp.
The Queen is Canada’s only sovereign to achieve this milestone. In recognition of this significant anniversary, Canada Post is releasing its first stamp to feature the “Machin” profile. The classic sculpted image has been used by the Royal Mail since 1967.
More than 70 stamps have honoured Her Majesty since her reign began on February 6, 1952. Read more…

Canada’s History: The Prince & the Pistols
James “Gunsmith” Jones’ gift was fit for royalty, his patrimony was not.
By Guy Simser 6 February 2018
For years, visits to Canada by British royalty have provided the hoi polloi with fodder for gossip. The most recent national sucking-of-breath would be the October 2002 media exposure of the little-engine-that-couldn’t during the Queen’s ill-fated water-taxi ride in Winnipeglink opens in new window. No matter the excruciating planning, Murphy’s Law often rules the day.
Such was the case in September 1860 during a visit by the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. The prince had been persuaded to divert his first extensive official Canadian tour to Chatham, Ontario, in order to accept a finely crafted pair of derringer pistols made by a local gunsmith and engraver of coffin-plates and Canadian Pacific Railway dining-car silverware.
As scheduled by minions, the prince arrived promptly in his royal coach at the Chatham rail station where he unexpectedly found himself twiddling his thumbs for ten minutes while local officials earnestly huddled to solve a last-minute difficulty.
This procedural hiccup was reported in a local newspaper of the time, the Chatham Tri-weekly Planet. Apparently, a certain prominent citizen named Mr. McKellar had been informed, much too late, that a Black businessman and manufacturer named James Monroe “Gunsmith” Jones had made the gift of derringer pistols. Read more…

The Lead-up to Vaccination in Georgian Times
By Diana J Oaks 7 February 2022
The origins of the procedure of variolation, where a small amount of live smallpox dust or fluid is introduced into a body to innoculate that person against the disease are not precisely known, with some sources claiming dates as far back as 200 BCE. It was being performed in China, Africa, and possibly India long before the practice was introduced in western society.
By the early 1700s, the practice of inoculation was common in Turkey, and In 1718, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had her five-year-old son undergo variolation in Constantinople.
A few years later, in 1721, Lady Montagu was back in England and had her two-year-old daughter variolated. Her advocacy of the procedure initially drew criticism, as it was not without risk. Variolated persons did become ill and were contagious while the disease ran its course. Two to three percent of people who received the live smallpox virus died, in spite of efforts to use the mildest strain and a tiny dose to minimize the risk. In light of a death rate that was ten times higher when the smallpox virus was acquired through contagion, early adopters of variolation in England accepted the risk.
Lady Montagu’s persistence caught the attention of the British Royal Family, who ran a variolation trial, not on themselves, but first on prisoners in Newgate Prison. Satisfied that it was safe, the then Princess of Wales, Caroline of Ansbach had her children variolated. Read more with emphasis on US, a note on Seige of Quebec.

Paint Your Own Picture from the Term “Macaroni”
Francis B. Lee in his 1903 book, Extracts from American Newspapers, explained the term “macaroni”:
The use of the word “macaroni,” known only to the present generation from its use in one of the many stanzas of “Yankee Doodle,” was used to distinguish any individual or group of people who sought to attract attention by eccentricities in dress. Contemporaneous terms, some of which are still employed, were gallant, bloods, bucks, beaux, fribbles, fops, monstrosities, Corinthians, dandles, exquisites and swells.
The macaronis’ reign was short, commencing about 1770 and lasting until the outbreak of the American Revolution. The year of their fullest fruition was 1772. A writer in the Philadelphia North American, contributing an article upon this subject, June 16th, 1803, says. that the macaronis distinguished themselves by an immense knot of artificial hair behind, a very small crushed hat, an enormous walking stick with long tassels, and a jacket, waistcoat, and small clothes cut to fit the person as closely as possible. Their most remarkable peculiarity was the large knot of hair, thus celebrated In a satirical song:

Five pounds of hair they wear behind,
The ladies to delight.
Their sense give unto the wind,
To make themselves; a fright,
This fashion, who does e’er pursue,
I think a simple tony;
For he’s a fool. say what you will,
Who Is a macaroni.

It would appear that the macaronis originated among a number of young men who had made the grand tour, and on their return formed themselves into a club, which, from a dish of macaroni, then little known in England, being always placed upon the dining table, was called the Macaroni Club.
London became “macaroni crazy.” They took the town by storm. Nothing was fashionable that was not a la macaroni. Even the clergy had their wigs combed, their clothes cut and their delivery refined a la macaroni. The shop windows were filled with prints of the new tribe; there were engraved portraits of turf macaronis, college macaronis and other varieties of the great macaroni race. At balls no other than macaroni music could be danced to; at places of public amusement macaroni songs … were sung to divert the company.
Stephen Davidson UE

JAR: Thomas Ditson: Puritan to Bumpkin to Patriot
by Jane L. Green 8 February 2022
The status of Thomas Ditson, Jr., as a minor hero of the American Revolution has more to do with the perception that he was an average, unpretentious farmer caught in the wrong place at the wrong time than with specific displays of courage. A deeper look at his activities reveals years of service first as a Massachusetts minuteman and then in the Continental Army as a sergeant—a position of authority and responsibility—during some of the war’s toughest battles. At the heart of his story is how his ancestors’ determination to build their own America rose inside him in the face of British opposition.
Ditson descended from Puritans who had escaped British persecution by fleeing England during the Great Migration to America from 1620 to 1650. Unlike immigrants to southern colonies who often came to America as fortune seekers, indentured servants, or as the penalty for committing crimes, as well as those forced to migrate through enslavement, the Puritans who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony were reasonably well off financially. They were well-educated and traveled in families along with proven leaders, came by the thousands, and were a dominant force in the New World until about 1740.
Several of Ditson’s ancestors helped found towns in the colony, such as Billerica and Woburn. A great, great grandmother, Winifred Henchman Holman, was accused and acquitted of being a witch in 1659. In 1700, one of Thomas’s grandfathers, Hugh Ditson, bought 250 acres near Billerica for sixty-six pounds and ten shillings. On this land Hugh’s heirs thrived. Hugh’s son Thomas Ditson, Sr., married Elizabeth Lawrence, and they had seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood. Thomas, Jr., and his twin sister Sarah were toward the end of this string of children, born on April 9, 1741. Sarah died two years later. The youngest Ditson, Samuel, was born in 1750. Thomas, Jr., married Elisabeth Blanchard on June 18, 1761. For the next fourteen years, he and Elisabeth worked on building their lives together, including having five children (eventually they would have four more). Read more…

JAR: Natural History in Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary America
by Matteo Giuliani 10 February 2022
In the second half of the 1700s, French natural historian Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, formulated what would be dubbed the “New World degeneracy” or the “American degeneracy” theory. His work, Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière, included a vast array of facts about natural history from around the world as well as the Count’s many ideas about the history of the Earth and the organisms that inhabit it. According to Buffon, a set number of distinct types of life generated near a central point. He suggested that species then underwent change as they migrated, affected by their new environments. In a way, Buffon was proposing a sort of proto-evolutionary hypothesis nearly one hundred years before Darwin.
The Count argued that all animals in the New World were degenerate compared to those in the Old World. “Animated nature, therefore is less active, less varied, and even less vigorous,” Buffon wrote, “for by the enumeration of the American animals we shall perceive, that not only the number of species is smaller, but that in general, they are inferior in size to those of the old continent.”
Buffon had never been to North America, and instead based his claims on specimens in the French King’s Cabinet of Natural History, prior published material on North America, accounts from travelers who had been to the New World, and a small menagerie he kept at his summer home, which included some New World and Old World animals. Read more… (fascinating riposte by Thomas Jefferson)

Washington’s Quill: George Washington’s Revolutionary-War Diplomacy
by Ben Huggins, 11 February 2022
When Gen. George Washington learned in August 1779 that the French minister who recently had arrived in America, Ann-César chevalier de La Luzerne, would be traveling from Boston to Philadelphia, Washington made plans to receive him at West Point, N.Y., in fitting style. Maj. Caleb Gibbs, the commander of Washington’s guard, even wrote to a commissary at Philadelphia in an effort to obtain “sugar, Cheese, Coffee, Chocolate, &c.,” items of which Washington’s table was “destitute.” Washington hosted the French diplomat for three days in September. The events of the visit provide a case study in the effectiveness of the general’s diplomatic skills.
The Marquis de Barbé-Marbois, La Luzerne’s secretary, described their first meeting with Washington and their trip down the Hudson River: Read more…

Borealia: Roughing It in the Bush: The Politics of the Book in Early Canada
By Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy 7 February 2022
In Imagined Communities, the seminal study of the emergence of national feeling, Benedict Anderson devoted a chapter to the case of creole nationalism. He linked the rise of nationalism and republicanism with the rise of a literate middle class in the New World, and argued that the ideological common ground of the new imagined communities of North and South America was facilitated by print capitalism which spread content that made it possible for native-born colonists to think of themselves as culturally, and then politically, distinct from their mother countries.
Anderson’s discussion of belonging in the New World did not account for Canada, whose political evolution diverged from the clear-cut pattern he identifies in the hemisphere. Together with the brief independence of Texas, Anderson dismissed Canada as an unexplained “failure” of the American model of nationalism anchored in republicanism which, he implies, was the norm everywhere else. Yet, the internal dynamics of the Early Canadian political and literary cultures can be better understood as the local manifestation of parallel models of transition to modernity that were not all focused on the creation of the nation-state through revolution and republic, and which allowed for more than one way to imagine community in North America and, possibly, elsewhere. Print capitalism was still part of the story.
Between the 1837-38 Rebellions and the Confederation of 1867, the colonies of British North America fiercely debated their political and institutional futures, their relationships with Britain and with the United States, and the choice between monarchy and republicanism. Read more…

Who are the People In The Picture? A New One, and One Identified (Maybe)
Go to Who’s In The Picture (WitP). Feb. 9, 2022. This photo (Ref. Code 2-17-2) shows two women in period costumes riding a golf cart. On the back is a note that it is “from Mildred Livingston” and possibly “Prescott.” The photo is from the 1989 Royal Convention (May 18-22 at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville QC), part of the Okill Stuart Fonds.
Do you recognize either of them?
If so, please send an email to Carl Stymiest, Leader of the Library and Archives Committee at communications@uelac.org — please note the date and reference number of the photo. Any additional relevant comments are welcome, and appreciated.
Carl Stymiest

We Know (maybe) Who’s In This Picture!
Identified maybe by Doug Grant.
I believe that the lady in the front row, third person from right, black dress is June Pierson UE. June was a teacher – the photo could be a photo of the staff at a school, perhaps for a yearbook. Time frame looks like fifties or early sixties.
The photo is from the Gov. Simcoe Branch, of which she was a long-time member who served on the executive for many years including President 1992-96. Hence in the Gov. Simcoe Fonds.
June was a key part of the Costume Committee at Dominion Office before it became the Costume Branch (1988-2005), a branch in its own right. June served as President and after retirement set up a workshop in her own home for it.
Although this photo is probably 15-30 years before I met her, the posture, build and glasses remind me of her.
Doug Grant, Gov. Simcoe Branch

UELAC Loyalist Directory: New Entries
The reworked version of the Loyalist Directory is now active and people looking for it are directed there. The data brought over from the older version is the same. So what is new?
Entries which have been added, or revised, this week.

  • Feb. 11, 2022: Information about Thomas Ganong has been added to the Loyalist Directory. Thanks to Barb Pearson and Robert Fisher.
  • Feb. 10, 2022: A new record for Daniel Grandine has been added. Thanks to Kevin Wisener.
  • Feb. 10, 2022: A new record for Daniel Watson has been added. Thanks to Andrew Payzant
  • Feb. 11, 2022: Information about David Quackenbush and Thomas Phillips Sr. has been added to the Loyalist Directory. Thanks to volunteer Jo Ann Tuskin, from branch records.

For Members: Recorded Presentation “Back Country Cunninghams in the American Revolution”
Wayne Lynch has researched the Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution for about 20 years. He has published over 40 articles and research papers, most of which detail the life and contributions of various Patriots or Loyalists from the southern back country. He lives in Houston, Texas.
Wayne spoke about a Loyalist family in his talk “Back Country Cunninghams in the American Revolution”. They lived in the area of Ninety-Six South Carolina. from his description, living in South Carolina at that time must have been horrific, and people from both sides did some audacious things. Maybe all civil wars are like that? In the members section of uelac.ca, look for Presentations.

Upcoming Events:

St Alban’s Centre: “Loyal They Remained” by Jean Rae Baxter Monday 21 Feb 7:00 ET

Hosted by the St. Alban’s Adolphustown Centre. Honouring Loyalist history through fiction. This event is supported by The Writers’ Union of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts.
See flyer with more details. about the presentation, Jean Rae Baxter and St. ALban’s Centre. To register and obtain link, please email info@stalbanscentre.ca.

Fort Plain: Leadership of George Washington by P. Henriques Feb 21 @7:00 ET

Professor Peter Henriques examines the unique set of personality traits and variety of talents that enabled Washington to achieve success that would not have seemed possible given the obstacles he faced. On Zoom. Details and registration

Toronto Branch: The Loyalists Who Stayed Behind: The Reintegration. Craig R Scott. Wed 23 Feb @7:30 ET

In November, we learned from Stephen Davidson’s presentation that only about 8 to 14% of those who were loyal to the British during the Revolutionary War came to Upper Canada and hundreds that did come returned to the U.S. What happened to loyalists left behind and those who returned there? To continue our learning, Craig R. Scott is going to speak to us about The Loyalists Who Stayed Behind: The Reintegration.
Craig Roberts Scott, MA, CG, FUGA is the President and CEO of Heritage Books, Inc. A professional genealogical and historical researcher for more than thirty years, he specializes in the records of the National Archives, especially those that relate to the military.
To register, send a note to torontouel@gmail.com and indicate if you are a member of UELAC (indicate which branch). The meeting link will be sent to you prior to the meeting.

From the Twittersphere and Beyond

  • This document includes a portion of the Royal Instructions given to Thomas Carleton by His Majesty King George III of England on August 18, 1784. The King instructs Carleton to quickly put in place a Council to help him in governing the new province. (Provincial Archives of N.B.)
  • This seal of New Brunswick is made of wax and measures 11 cm by 1.2 cm thick. On one side is the royal coat-of-arms of George III and on the other side is a ship sailing upriver and the N.B. motto “Spem Reduxit” which means “hope restored”. Photo, c 1785. (Provincial Archives of N.B.)
  • King’s Landing: Enjoy a 3D tour of one of our historic homes, the Morehouse Farm
  • Historic Goat Island Church, oldest Baptist church building in Nova Scotia and possibly Canada built about 1810.
  • What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week? (Massachusetts Spy 2/6/1772) – see cloths, hosiery, Manchester goods, silks, India goods, Stuffs and more…
  • This week in History
  • Clothing and Related:
    • The sheer structural geometry of this 1770s mauve grey taffeta takes some fathoming. Each plane of silk, each angle of handstitching is precision engineered to form a perfect symmetry that fans out into a rustle of tiny pleats & the rush of skirt to the floor
    • 18th Century dress and matching petticoat, 1780-85 (altered c.1900) The restraint in decoration illustrates the growing influence of the Neo-classical style in textile design
    • 18th Century dress, yellow silk brocade with floral design. Probably altered from a mid 18th century robe à la française and restyled as a robe à l’anglaise with pleats at centre back stitched down at the waist. c.1770
    • this week’s footwear favourite from Shoephoria is a beautiful woven silk brocade shoe from the 1740s! Silk was the fashionable choice for women’s shoes in the 18th century and this example features a fabulous floral design in cream, green and blue
    • 18th Century riding coat. The skirt is vented at back for maximum movement, while the bodice champions an excessive tautness typical of the period. Size of cuff, breadth of skirt, emphasis on the waist determine the 1760’s date.
    • 18th Century embroidery sample for a men’s waistcoat or coat, It is dated ca. 1775–1805, made from silk taffeta, silk thread, silver wire, sequins and glass.
    • 18th Century waistcoat, cream silk woven with green & rose flowers & metallic silver ribbon, silver sequin embroidery, 1770’s, English
    • 18th Century men’s court suit, silk cut and uncut velvet on twill foundation with paste stones, foil, sequins, and metallic-thread embroidered appliqués, French (of course), 1780-85
  • Townsends:
    • Not this week
  • Miscellaneous
    • When I was mudlarking in the pouring rain this week I stooped down to examine a clay pipe stem & then noticed a mound of glass emerging from the mud. It’s a late 17th C mini onion bottle & the world is a vastly different place to when it last saw light of day

Last Post: MORLEY, Marilyn MacLeod (nee Peever)
The Hamilton Branch is sorry to lose a long-time member. Marilyn Morley passed peacefully at Joseph Brant Hospital on Tuesday, February 1, 2022 at the age of 94. Beloved wife of nearly 70 years to Colin Morley. Marilyn was a loving mother to five children and grandmother to three.
She loved to read and was fortunate to travel. Marilyn will be remembered for her generous spirit. She was a devoted member to Wellington Square United Church in Burlington.
For those who wish, memorial donations to The Art Gallery of Burlington would be sincerely appreciated by the family.
Pat Blackburn UE, President

Last Post: HALL UE, Louise 1924 – 2022
Dear members and friends of Sir John Johnson Centennial Branch,
It is with deep sadness that we mourn the passing of LOUISE HALL UE, a very dear friend and longtime member of Sir John Johnson Centennial Branch. Louise was a descendant of Loyalist Jeremiah Spencer and Loyalist Edward Savage. She was a very active member of our Branch since 1993 and our Branch treasurer for many years. Louise passed away on Thursday, February 10, aged 97. She will be missed greatly.
Our deepest sympathy to her sister Adelaide Lanktree UE and to the family.
Michel Racicot, President

Louise Hall, resident of Farnham, aged 97, died peacefully in her sleep at the Residence CRP in Cowansville on February 10, 2022. Throughout her life Louise was a devoted and inspirational educator – teacher, principal, visiting teacher with the Department of Protestant Education, and lastly, specialist in Educational Sciences with the Ministère de l’éducation.
Louise’s second calling was that of volunteering. She was deeply dedicated to BMP hospital where she volunteered for over 70 years! She also co-founded the Farnham Library over 60 years ago and in 2018 was honoured when it was officially named Bibliothèque municipale Louise-Hall.
Louise and Adelaide shared their home in Farnham for many years, regularly welcoming former students, friends and family to their haven in the Eastern Townships.
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Published by the UELAC
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