In this issue:
- Scholarship Challenge 2022: Multiplying UE Scholar Opportunities
- Barrington Township’s Forgotten Loyal Migrants – Part Four, by Stephen Davidson UE
- Battle of Trois-Rivières 8 June 1776
- JAR: Point/Counterpoint, 1777 Style: Dueling Proclamations from Israel Putnam and William Tryon
- Ben Franklin’s World: Loyalism in the British Atlantic World
- Seeking Fortune: The Revolutionary Path(s) of Fortune Freeman and Fortune Conant
- CommonPlace: “A Very Curious Religious Game”: Spiritual Maps and Material Culture in Early America
- JAR: King Frederick the Great and the American Colonies: The Preliminaries
- The Tricorne or “Cocked Hat”
- Canada’s History: History Bits: Wildfire AKA Tom Longboat
- Query: Land Grants vs Land Warrants vs Escheats
- UELAC Loyalist Directory: New Entries
- In The News:
- Maine’s First Ship – Replica Successfully Launched
- Niagara eager for UNESCO Global Geopark assessment
- Upcoming Events:
- King’s Royal Yorkers at Adolphustown 18 & 19 June
- Kawartha Branch Saturday 18 June Grave Marking
- Kawartha Branch Sunday 19 June Plaque to John Chard UE, Church Service
- Toronto and Gov. Simcoe Branches, Loyalist Day Sun 19 June, @10:00
- St. Alban’s Centre UEL Service & Jubilee Tea Sunday June 19 @3:00
- Young Family Reunion at Caledonia ON Saturday 9 July
- From the Twittersphere and Beyond
Twitter: http://twitter.com/uelac
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2303178326/?ref=share
Scholarship Challenge 2022: Multiplying UE Scholar Opportunities
Thank you for your interest in the UELAC Scholarship Fund. This important work of our organization is helping to ensure that the story of the Loyalists in the American Revolution and the aftermath of settlement in Canada continues to be researched and shared by Masters and PhD graduate students who apply for a qualify for the scholarship money.
Today we launch a Scholarship Challenge called Multiplying UE Scholar opportunities. This 2022 Scholarship Challenge will run until August 22, 2022 with weekly updates in Loyalist Trails and on the UELAC website. Donate and watch our success as we meet the challenge goal of $8088.
For details and to donate, visit Scholarship Challenge 2022
Taking the challenge with you!
Christine E. Manzer UE, Scholarship Committee Chair.
Barrington Township’s Forgotten Loyal Migrants – Part Four of Four
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
While not setting out to pay special attention to the Loyalist settlers of Barrington Township and Shelburne County, Edwin Crowell’s history of that region of Nova Scotia preserved many names and stories that would otherwise have been lost. This particular group of loyal migrants included Black Loyalists and European soldiers as well as Loyalists from the Middle and New England colonies. Here is the last collection of those almost forgotten settlers.
The accounts of Loyalists that Crowell gathered were often all too brief. Samuel Bootman, for example, was from Marblehead, Massachusetts but married a woman from Virginia. Whether this happened before or after their arrival in Nova Scotia is not recorded. The couple settled in Blanche on what was then a peninsula south of Cape Negro. Their two oldest sons, Jonathan and Samuel died while fishing at sea. The surviving Bootman siblings were Mary, Elizabeth and Deborah.
Having escaped the violence of the American Revolution did not make the Loyalist settlers of south-western Nova Scotia invulnerable to tragedy. Samuel Penney settled in the community of Barrington Head where he married a widow named Sarah Nickerson with four children in 1786. By 1789, Seth and Richard were old enough to fish with their stepfather. It was in that year that a squall upset Penney’s fishing boat and all three were drowned. Sarah Penney supported Daniel and Sarah, her surviving children, by working at a loom.
The loss of a spouse or parents was all too common in the era of Loyalist settlement. Thomas Ross came to Shelburne when he was only 4 or 5 years old, the orphaned son of a Scottish couple who had settled in New York. The Lickmicut family adopted young Ross. When he grew up and made his living at sea, he was able to buy land on Stoney Island. There he moved a house from Shelburne and rebuilt it “oak frame and all”, living in it with Mrs. Lickmicut until he married. He became the father of 21 children, most of whom lived to adulthood.
Two other Loyalist brothers fared better. Joseph and Nathaniel Purdy lived in the Catskills on the Hudson River before the outbreak of the American Revolution. Nathaniel fought with the British Army both in North America and later at the Battle of Waterloo, never to be wounded. He eventually married and settled at Port Latour. Joseph became a carpenter after arriving in Nova Scotia. He and his wife Mary Lycett lived at Solid Rock.
William Burke was a Loyalist widower who brought his daughter Mary to Barrington from Halifax. There he married a widow named Sarah Barlow whose husband had been a grocer in New York. She and her two daughters, Ann and Susan, initially settled in Shelburne before moving to Barrington.
Although he was a baker in the British Army during the revolution, Thomas Chatwynd became a member of the Loyalist Association of New York that settled in Shelburne. There he was known as a merchant. Upon completing his schooling in England, Chatwynd’s son William was “compelled to enlist in the Continental Army” after he arrived in the rebelling colonies. Local folklore claims that he and three others stole a small sailing boat, and charted a course up the Atlantic coast to safety in Barrington.
Lorenzo Sabine who made the first collection of Loyalist biographies recorded the following for William Robertson, who went to Shelburne in 1783: “He possessed a wonderful memory, and was consulted the country round. His wife was Sarah, daughter of Gabriel Van Norden.” Crowell noted that Robertson established a blacksmith business in Barrington Passage and later became a justice of the peace. “Himself Presbyterian, his wife Episcopalian, they both held tenaciously to their modes of worship and the home thus became the nucleus of the two churches of those denominations in the township.”
What is known of William Donaldson indicates a man who held strong convictions. Originally from Virginia, this Loyalist and his wife Sarah Wright carried on “an important trade” in Barrington Head after their initial stay in Shelburne. Having no children of his own, Donaldson adopted a nephew as his heir. However, something in young Matthew Donaldson’s character did not meet his uncle’s approval, and so the Loyalist left his property to the local Methodist Church. The latter used the land to build its chapel and parsonage.
Crowell notes that William Donaldson had John Sargent, another Loyalist, as his neighbour. They “kept up a bitter feud” over the precise boundaries of their properties. A three-man arbitration committee finally settled the two Loyalists’ dispute in 1797.
Sherose Island became the home of a couple with ties to the refugee diaspora of the American Revolution. In the autumn of 1783, Michael Swim and his brother boarded separate ships that left New York for Nova Scotia. A storm forced Michael’s ship to seek shelter in Shelburne while his brother’s vessel docked at the mouth of the St. John River in present day New Brunswick. Michael found work as a clerk in Shelburne. Business took him to Barrington a few years later, and as the community was about 48 km away, he stayed in the Sherose Island home of Mrs. Thomas Doane.
There he met and fell in love with Lettice, the daughter of his hostess. The couple married in October of 1786 and built a house at Barrington Passage just down the coast from Sherose Island. The couple and their 14 children eventually settled at Clark’s Harbour.
Their first home was a log cabin, the cellar of which was still visible in the opening decades of the 20th century. Later, Swim brought a house from Shelburne – presumably by sea. Swim carried on “a business” and was involved in the Atlantic fishery. Remembered as a man “of quiet and stern manner and of good education”, Swim served at one time as an evening school teacher. Local folklore maintains that Clark’s Harbour – the water bordering the Swim’s homestead– was named for Michael Swim as he was widely known as “the clerk” (or “clark” as it is pronounced in England).
Loyalist descendants with an interest in Nova Scotia’s Barrington Township and its vicinity should consult a digital version of Edwin Crowell’s book. It sheds light on Loyalists that have long been forgotten.
See: <http://www.lacolony.org/hist_of_barrington_web.pdf>
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.
Battle of Trois-Rivières 8 June 1776
Wikipedia.
The Battle of Trois-Rivières was fought on June 8, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War. A British army under Quebec Governor Guy Carleton defeated an attempt by units from the Continental Army under the command of Brigadier General William Thompson to stop a British advance up the Saint Lawrence River valley. The battle occurred as a part of the American colonists’ invasion of Quebec, which had begun in September 1775 with the goal of removing the province from British rule.
The crossing of the Saint Lawrence by the American troops was observed by Quebec militia, who alerted British troops at Trois-Rivières.[6] A local farmer led the Americans into a swamp, enabling the British to land additional forces in the village, and to establish positions behind the American army. After a brief exchange between an established British line and American troops emerging from the swamp, the Americans broke into a somewhat disorganized retreat. As some avenues of retreat were cut off, the British took a sizable number of prisoners, including General Thompson and much of his staff.
This was the last battle of the war fought on Quebec soil. Following the defeat, the remainder of the American forces, under the command of John Sullivan, retreated, first to Fort Saint-Jean, and then to Fort Ticonderoga. Read more…
JAR: Point/Counterpoint, 1777 Style: Dueling Proclamations from Israel Putnam and William Tryon
by Todd W. Braisted 9 June 2022
As the year 1777 drew to a close, the region around the city of New York had been under British control for a year. Although the British position was strong, the recent surrender of a British army at Saratoga dramatically changed the prospects of the war ending any time soon. Troops in the New York garrison settled in for another winter at war….
On the morning of November 30 two officers brought Tryon separate copies of the same proclamation, written in German, their troops had found near the front lines.[1] It was an appeal to German soldiers. Tryon’s interpreter, Anthony Fiva, quickly translated it:
By the Honorable Israel Putnam Major General & Commander in Chief of the United American Forces, On their different Stations, at the White Plains.
Proclamation
Whereas, The King of Great Britain….
The German regimental officers, however, chose not to wait for Clinton’s response. They took it upon themselves to write a response, a declaration, that Tryon sent to Clinton for his approval:
Declaration
It is not the first time that the Rebel Generals have made it their Study to mislead the Hessian and other foreign Troops in British Pay, and to induce them by insiduous arts to desertion, under the fair Promises, that they should be received well.
Ben Franklin’s World: Loyalism in the British Atlantic World
Brad Jones, Professor of History at California State University, Fresno and author of the book, Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic. Professor Jones joins us to investigate the ideology of loyalism and how loyalism was a loyalty and ideology adopted by British Americans living across the British Atlantic World.
During our investigation, Brad reveals how and why we should view the American Revolution as a civil war; The central role Protestantism played in Britons’ sense of Britishness; And the ways the ideas of the American Revolution caused ideas about loyalism to develop, and how those ideas developed and took hold in the broader British Atlantic World. Listen in…
Seeking Fortune: The Revolutionary Path(s) of Fortune Freeman and Fortune Conant
Boston National Historical Park
In the spring of 1818, an old man named Fortune Freeman appeared before the Mayor’s Court of New York City. Whether there of his own volition or brought to the court by a city official, it remains unclear, but Freeman, “extremely poor” and unable to work, swore to the court that he served as a soldier in the Revolution, and applied for a veteran’s pension for some relief. Arriving to the court with merely the clothes on his back, Freeman provided few details about his personal life in his statement. Aside from his own declarations, few records of his life exist before or after the war. Only one of these precious few records remained in his possession when he approached the court: a discharge paper from the 4th Massachusetts, issued to him at the close of the Revolutionary War in 1783.
Originally from Massachusetts, Freeman moved to New York City at some point after the war. The Black private joined thousands of other veterans in a post-war exodus from their home states. Freeman did not have a unique experience as a veteran in poverty. He became one of 20,000 Revolutionary War veterans who filed for a pension by the end of 1818 following the passage of a pension bill that same year. The law promised pensions to veterans “in reduced circumstances” who had served at least nine months in the Continental Army. Ten thousand more veterans applied the following year. When Congress first passed the law, they expected fewer than 2,000 eligible applicants and estimated that it would cost $155,000. Congress estimated wrong. By the end of 1818, the program cost nearly $2 million.
Old, destitute, and with little else to rely upon, Freeman sought financial assistance from the country he served for nearly six long years. In his pension application, Read more…
CommonPlace: “A Very Curious Religious Game”: Spiritual Maps and Material Culture in Early America
by Janet Moore Lindman
The Quaker spiritual journey, often invisible due to its silent, humble and individual nature, is illustrated in this map.
In 1916, Albert Edmunds (1857-1941) recalled “a very curious religious game” that young Friends played with on Sunday afternoons. Born into a Quaker family in Middlesex, England, Edmunds attended the Croyden Friends Boarding School and later taught there before attending university and emigrating to the United States. The game he remembered was based on an allegorical map called “A Map of the Various Paths of Life” created in 1794 by American minister George Dillwyn (1738-1820). Edmunds was familiar with a dissected version of the map (what we call a jigsaw puzzle) that became popular in the late eighteenth century. As an artifact of his Quaker childhood, this map depicts an imaginary landscape fraught with risk and reward for the pious Friend.
Accompanying the map was a letter by an unnamed parent to his or her children delineating the “various paths to happiness” that Friends walked from early childhood to old age. The letter warned Quaker offspring to remain on the straight and narrow, lest they find themselves in “Off Guard Parish”. Read more…
JAR: King Frederick the Great and the American Colonies: The Preliminaries
by Bob Ruppert 7 June 2022
Upon the death of his grandfather on May 31, 1740, Frederick William II of the House of Hohenzollern became the King of Prussia. Over the next forty-six years, he pursued two goals: modernizing Prussia and reuniting the lands that had once been part of Prussia. In his youth he received a classical education including exposure to the philosophy of the French Enlightenment. As a young man he acquired considerable battlefield experience, but it was only after he became King that he displayed his skills in the areas of military strategy, logistics, mobility, and tactics. These skills brought Frederick and his army of 80,000 men a number of victories on the battlefield. His two greatest victories resulted in Prussia gaining control of the province of Silesia from Austria and acquiring the northwestern part of Poland. In many other ways, he was a man ahead of his time. He supported freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and promoted religious tolerance; he established the first veterinary school and first law school in Prussia; he required compulsory primary education that was tax-funded for boys and girls up to the age of fourteen; he built canals, the Berlin Opera House, the Royal Library and St. Hedwig’s Cathedral (all of which stand today); he protected Prussian industries with high tariffs, but imposed minimal taxes on domestic trade; he funded a massive drainage program that turned 150,000 acres into rich farmland, controlled the price of grain for the less than fortunate and re-instituted the Prussian Academy of Science, to name a few. By the time he died, Frederick had transformed Prussia from a small unimportant kingdom into one of the enlightened countries in Europe. Read more…
The Tricorne or “Cocked Hat”
by Geri Walton, 6 Dec 2017
The tricorne hat, which was initially called a “cocked hat,” became popular in the 1700s but was falling out of fashion by the 1800s and eventually evolved into the bicorne. The tricorne was actually an evolution of a broad-brim round hat worn by Spanish soldiers in Flanders in the 1600s. When its brim was pledged (bound), it formed a triangular shape. The triangular shape was the shape favored by Spanish soldiers. Thus, when war broke out in 1667 between France and Spain in the Spanish Netherlands, the triangular hat found its way to France. Read more…
Canada’s History: History Bits: Wildfire AKA Tom Longboat
Meet Tom Longboat, an Onondaga long-distance runner who becomes a world-class athlete. Watch now. (This episode is the sixth of a new animated web series called History Bits. 5 minutes. This video also comes with French subtitles; you can adjust the language in the captioning section of your viewer. )
Query: Land Grants vs Land Warrants vs Escheats
I have completed extracting information about the Cumberland County Loyalist Land Grants from the Public Archives of Nova Scotia (PANS) records to submit to the Loyalist Directory. Most (but certainly not all) of the “Westchester Loyalists” are done.
I have copied Annapolis County, and have a question about how they are listed. The majority are listed as Land Grants. However, there are also a large number of “Land Warrants” and of “Escheats”.
Can someone tell me what the difference is one from another for those three?
Lynton (Bill) Stewart theoldmedic@att.net
UELAC Loyalist Directory: New Entries
Entries which have been added, or revised, this week, with thanks:
- Debra Honor provided information about
- Pvt. John Butlersettled first in New Brunswick, then Woodhouse Twp., Norfolk Co., Ontario (he had been confused with Col. John Butler of Niagara.)
- Thanks to Lynton (Bill) Stewart. The following settled in Cumberland County NS; many are from Westchester County NY and many servedf in Delancey’s Corp
If you are willing to submit some information, send a note to loyalist.trails@uelac.org
All help is appreciated. …doug
Maine’s First Ship – Replica Successfully Launched
The pinnace Virginia was the first ocean-going English ship built in the Americas, and she started a 400-year legacy of shipbuilding in the lower Kennebec River near Bath Maine.
The Virginia has been reconstructed by volunteers in and around the Bath Freight Shed in Bath Maine, with as special weekend at the beginning of June 2022..
Check the Current Status of Virginia for pre-launch days and actual launch on 4 June. Open the launch page to see videos
Visit mfship.org for more.
Niagara eager for UNESCO Global Geopark assessment
A Global Geopark is an area containing sites and landscapes of international geological significance, according to United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and Niagara is on the cusp of receiving Ontario’s first such designation.
“Originally, [Balls Falls] had well over 1200 acres that was gifted by the government to the United Empire Loyalists, and Butler’s Rangers, who’d fought in the War of 1812,” said Powell. “The Ball family purchased several hundred acres and settled here back in the early 1800s. The Balls Falls Conservation Area today covers about 78 hectares, extending towards Jordan Harbour on the 20 Mile Creek.”
The UNESCO evaluation will last three to four days, and will include visits to different types of landscapes and cultural geosites with international significance. Read more…
King’s Royal Yorkers at Adolphustown 18 & 19 June
June 18 & 19 The King’s Royal Regiment of New York (aka King’s Royal Yorkers) will be at The UEL Heritage Centre and Park in Adolphustown. Saturday marking cemeteries and Sunday Loyalist Day flag raising. See next two items with Kawartha Branch. (Many Yorkers are also members of the Canadian Regiment of Fencible Infantry from that time period and we have marked several graves of those who served in both conflicts).
Kawartha Branch Saturday 18 June Grave Marking
Saturday June 18 UEL Grave Markings, with Reenactors
11 War of 1812 Veterans, 2 United Empire Loyalists. See flyer and map.
- 10:00 am Warkworth Cemetery
- 11:30 am Stones Cemetery
- 2:00 pm Cramahe Hills Cemetery
Kawartha Branch Sunday 19 June Plaque to John Chard UE, Church Service
In Adolphustown to dedicate a plaque honouring the late E. John Chard UE, on Sunday, 19 June 2022, starting at 1:00 p.m. ET. Participating Branches: Bicentennial, Kawartha, Kingston, Sir John Johnson Centennial and St. Lawrence, plus Dominion President Trish Groom UE. Program: Speeches, unveiling,reaths will be laid at the cenotaph, musket volley and raising the UE flag. The Royal Yorkers and many others will be in period clothing.
Following the plaque unveiling, we will attend the UEL church service at St. Albans church across the street, with refreshments afterwards.
Toronto and Gov. Simcoe Branches, Loyalist Day Sun 19 June 10:00am
Gov. Simcoe and Toronto Branches celebrate Loyalist Day together. This year’s theme is early Loyalist Settlements in what is now Ontario, with some vignettes and guest speaker Dan Buchanan on George Springer UEL.
We will recognize our First Nations Loyalist allies, National Aboriginal Day (June 21) and National Indigenous History Month as well as Father’s Day. Join us on zoom – Register now.
St. Alban’s Centre UEL Service & Jubilee Tea Sunday June 19 at 3pm
St. Alban’s Centre will host its annual UEL Service to celebrate the landing of the Loyalist in Adolphustown 238 years ago and, in this Jubilee year, also highlight our national and local relationship with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
The guest speaker is Jean Ray Baxter, author and historian and a 2022 Governor General’s History Award Nominee.
Following the service, a special Jubilee Tea will be at the Old Town Hall, another significant heritage building in Adolphustown.
Memorabilia from Queen Elizabeth’s reign will be on display in the hall.
St. Alban’s Centre, Adolphustown, 613-373-8865 or cianeberlet4@aol.com
Young Family Reunion at Caledonia ON Saturday 9 July
The Annual Young Family Reunion (Descendants of Adam Young 1717-1790 & Catharine Schremling 1720-1798) will be held on Saturday, July 9 11:30-3 PM at the Grace United Church, Caledonia, Ontario. See details. Questions to Betty Yundt pyundt@nas.net
From the Twittersphere and Beyond
- List of Loyalist graves so far in Nova Scotia shows 375 names and identifies over 50 different United Empire Loyalist Burial Grounds at Find A Grave – Brian McvConnell UE @brianm564
- Bishop Charles Inglis – On wall of The Cathedral Church of All Saints in #Halifax, NS is this plaque which viewed on Sunday while there for a celebration for the Queen’s #PlatinumJubilee
- This week in History
- 10 Jun 1768, Customs officers seized John Hancock’s ship “Liberty” for alleged smuggling. Waterfront workers responded by rioting. Read Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s version of events, courtesy of the Colonial Society:
- 9 Jun 1772 Angered by Townshend Acts, Colonists board & burn grounded British customs ship Gaspee, off Rhode-Island.
- 4 Jun 1775 Ethan Allen is surprised at armed response to reconnaissance party by Canadians; was hoping for support.
- 5 Jun 1775 Williamsburg magazine is looted of 400 guns by rebellious mob.
- 10 Jun 1775 Congress starts the process of organizing the state militia forces besieging Boston as a Continental Army.
- 6 Jun 1776 Gen. Clinton proclaims the people of Charleston, SC must “return to their Duty to our common Sovereign.”
- 7 Jun 1776 Richard Henry Lee introduces Independence Resolution in Continental Congress; tabled until 1 July.
- 8 Jun 1776 Rebels lose 400+ men to British in running battle at Trois-Rivieres, between Quebec City and Montreal.
- 7 June 1777 Capt Frederick Fotheringham’s 32-gun frigate HMS Fox is defeated by the 23-gun frigate Boston under Capt Hector McNeil & 32-gun frigate Hancock under Capt John Manley. Hancock & Fox are severely damaged. McNeil & Manley squabble over the prize.
- 7 Jun 1780, Massachusetts installed the first state constitution ratified by popular vote. It also contains a clearly prescribed Bill of Rights, which serves as a basis for outlawing slavery.
- 4 Jun 1801 Died this day. American traitor, Benedict Arnold. He fought with distinction for the American Continental Army and rose to the rank of major general before defecting to the British side of the conflict in 1780.
- Clothing and Related:
- Button, 1775
- 18th Century dress, originally a Robe à la Française but clumsily converted in 1780’s perhaps suggesting it had been handed down to a maid. The design for this silk was created by freelance textile designer Anna Maria Garthwaite (1690-1763)
- 18th Century dress, Robe à l’anglaise of silk tobine with cannellé maroon stripes with woven pale blue spots, white satin stripes with a narrow floral trail in green & blue. 1770-1775
- 18th Century dress, rear view of an open dress with linen skirt, England, 1795. This dress had been altered from a Robe a l’Anglaise circa 1785 to follow the changing fashions and rising waistlines.
- 18th Century men’s matching 3 piece suit, made from linen with silk embroidery a perfect summer outfit. American, c.1780
- 18th Century men’s waistcoat, 1780’s The influence of Neo-classical design is evident in the decoration. Medallions of twill silk minutely & skilfully painted in black with mythological classical figures have been applied to the front & collar
- 18th Century men’s coat in shaved velvet with pink ground & vertical green and horizontal white pile, decorated with embroidered flowers in shades of cream and green, spangles & silver thread. c.1780-1790’s
- Townsends:
- Unusual and Delicious Pan Fried Puddings from 1773
- Miscellaneous
- Supplying and producing necessities such as snowshoes is just one of the many ways Indigenous women contributed to the fur trade. Shown is A Man & his Wife Returning with a Load of Partridges from their Tent. Watercolour by William Richards, c.1807.
- A pocket worked by Mary Hebbert in 1787, depicting the Vincent Lunardi balloon ascent of 1784, including the dog and cat.
- The Crooked House 0f Windsor is a commercial building dating from 1687. It is the oldest teahouse in all of England. The building was reconstructed in the 18th c and now stands on “an outrageous slant.”
Published by the UELAC
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