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2023 Recipients of the UELAC Dorchester Award
The UELAC Dorchester Award exemplifies Volunteer Excellence and Participation, by conferring recognition on recipients for their lengthy contribution to the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada. This award salutes the “best in volunteerism” amongst our members. Read more and see previous recipients.

Barbara Jane (Lane) Andrew UE (Assiniboine Branch UELAC)

In 1999, Barb began researching her family loyalist ancestors and joined the Manitoba Branch UELAC. She served as President 2006 – 2008 and then edited the newsletter Loyalist Lines.
From 2009 to 2013, Barb served as the Prairie Region Councilor, and in 2012, she was elected Regional Vice President, then served as President for three terms. She continues to serve on the Board of Directors today, as Treasurer and Regional Vice President. Barb is also chair of the UELAC Education and Outreach Committee.
At the Assiniboine Branch she serves as President and recently started the Cemetery Plaque project for the Branch.
Barb has also been recognized for her volunteer activities in her local Brandon Community. Read more with photo.

Gerald (Gerry) William Adair UE (Saskatchewan Branch UELAC)

Gerry was the Prairie Regional Vice President and the UELAC Volunteer Recognition Chairperson for sixteen years. He became Treasurer for the Saskatchewan Branch in 2003 and is currently Branch Genealogist.
Gerry was instrumental in hosting UELAC Conferences and AGM in Regina in 2005 and in Moose Jaw in 2018.
Gerry has thirteen proven loyalist ancestors; their histories are shared on his website. As editor, in 2020 he completed the book, “Loyalist Descendants in Saskatchewan” initiated in 2014 as the UELAC Centennial project for Saskatchewan Branch. Read more with photo…

Funding Future Knowledge – 2023 Scholarship Challenge, June 1 – August 1, 2023
This week we hear from UELAC Scholarship Committee member Heather Smith UE from the Grand River Branch with encouragement to support the 2023 Fund Raising Challenge –
She says:

I feel that supporting PhD and MA students doing primary research on the Loyalist period is perhaps the most important work that UELAC can do. Although this era continues to recede in time we have the opportunity to find new sources and new interpretations of existing sources. History is never finished; it is never all sorted out. I worked in museums for many years and I know first hand how important it is to have good scholarship to draw upon. So please support the scholarship fund and let’s keep learning what our Loyalist ancestors lives were like

Here is the link to the Scholarship Challenge.
Christine Manzer UE Chair of the Scholarship Committee.

Isabella’s Tangled Web
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
One of the fascinating aspects of Loyalist history is how very diverse threads can make up the web of a refugee’s life. Individual Loyalists can be linked to multiple geographical locations such as the German states, Australia, India, and South Africa as well as Great Britain and the various North American colonies. Loyalists can have European or African ancestors as well as Christian or Jewish forbears.
A prime example of all the diverse elements found in a Loyalist’s heritage is the case of Isabella Stewart Brenton.
Isabella Stewart was born in Annapolis, Maryland in 1771. Her father was Anthony Stewart, a man who had moved to Maryland from Scotland in 1753 when he was 15 years old. In 1764, Anthony married Jean Dick, the daughter of his business partner James Dick, on March 15, 1764. The groom was 26; the bride was 22.
The couple had 7 children. James was born on November 1, 1765. Margaret (Peggy), the oldest daughter, was born on August 18 1767. As we shall see, a ship named in Peggy’s honour would become the focal point a significant event in Maryland’s revolutionary history. Isabella was born three years later, and was later featured in a painting with her older brother John who was born on June 10, 1769. The portrait, executed by the artist Charles Willson Peale, can be seen in a museum in Madrid, Spain.
Mary Stewart was born on March 1, 1773, followed by Wilhelmina on October 16, 1774. Isabella’s youngest sibling was Alexander Leslie Stewart, who was born on January 17, 1782.
Isabella’s father and grandfather were merchants who had a number of ships that imported and exported goods with England. Business was so good that Anthony Stewart was able to purchase a 2,258-acre estate two years after Isabella’s birth. The merchant also owned land in Dorchester County, a warehouse in Londontowne, and a home in Annapolis. However, Isabella’s pampered childhood would all begin to unravel following the burning of one of her father’s ships.
When local Patriots discovered that one of Stewart’s vessels was carrying tea into Annapolis in the fall of 1774, they forced the merchant to burn his own ship in the city’s harbour. This event has continued to be commemorated as Peggy Stewart Day, a celebration that is observed every October 19th in Annapolis on an annual basis. (How many Loyalists’ daughters have an annual American celebration that bears their name?)
Over the next year, Maryland’s rebels began to “harass and distress” Isabella’s father because of his strenuous opposition to “the enemies of government”. A Loyalist, Anthony Stewart felt so intimidated by threats of violence and imprisonment that he had “to fly from the country, leaving his wife, family, and property at the mercy of the rebels” in 1775. Little Isabella was just 4 years old when her father sought sanctuary in England. Two years later, Stewart was one of the Loyalists who worked as a civil servant for the British forces headquartered in New York City.
Isabella’s mother had been left to fend for herself with six children who, at the time of Anthony’s abrupt departure, ranged in age from one to ten years old. It is not known for certain how long Isabella’s father was separated from his family. Given that Isabella’s youngest brother Alexander Leslie Stewart, was born on January 17, 1782, it would seem that her parents were reunited at least nine months earlier in 1781. If so, Isabella would not have seen her father for a period of six years.
In September of 1783, the Stewart family boarded an evacuation ship bound for Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. Isabella was 12 years old at the time – old enough to have memories of her parents’ persecution in Maryland and their life as refugees in New York City.
Her father and some other Scottish settlers received land grants on the west bank of the Sissiboo River, but the settlement known as New Edinburgh did not flourish. Her father eventually moved to Halifax where he established himself as a merchant.
By 1785, Isabella’s father owned 2,000 acres of land in Halifax. It was also the year that he sailed for England to appear before the Royal Commission on the Losses and Services of American Loyalists to seek compensation for all that he had lost in Maryland. Isabella was 14 when her father once again left his family to make a transatlantic journey. He would return with an annual allowance of £135.
In 1787, Isabella chanced to meet a young sailor whose ship had docked in Halifax. His name was Jahleel Brenton, the son of a prominent Rhode Island Loyalist. From 1787 to 1789, he was an officer of the Dido that was charged with surveying the coast of Nova Scotia.
When the couple met, both Isabella and Jahleel were just 18 years old. While the circumstances around their first encounter are unknown, the family records note that “a mutual attachment arose”. Their time together did not last long; Brenton had to return to the sea. The War of the Second Coalition, which marked the end of the French Revolution, kept the British Navy and the young officer occupied until the signing of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. Brenton “was constantly afloat, and performed much hard duty”.
During her sweetheart’s long absence, Isabella left Halifax for England. Her father had been very ill with a “stroke of palsy” in 1788, but lived through nearly three more decades. He died in December of 1812. Three of her siblings returned to the United States; two disappeared from the family records. James, the eldest Stewart sibling, remained in Nova Scotia, married, and had many descendants.
After not seeing one another for 13 years, Isabella and Jahleel met again in England. Brenton had waited for his promotion to the rank of post captain before proposing. The children of two Loyalist Americans were finally married in 1802. Isabella was a 31 year-old bride – quite old for that era. Within a year they had their first child, James Jervis Brenton. His sister Isabella was born in 1806, and Launcelot Charles Lee Brenton rounded out the family in 1808.
Seven years later, the Brenton family left England for South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, where Jahleel had been appointed the naval commissioner. By this point in time, Isabella’s husband had been made a baronet and was addressed as Sir Jahleel Brenton.
Sometime after her family’s arrival in South Africa, Isabella contracted a disease that afflicted her for many months. Her doctor was James Miranda Barrie, noted as the first modern surgeon to successfully perform a caesarean section. Despite the skills of her physician, Isabella died on July 29, 1817.
Jahleel had a white marble tombstone placed over his wife’s grave. Designed by Sir Francis Chantrey, the leading British portrait sculptor of his era, the tombstone listed Isabella’s age (46) and declared, “She was to her beloved husband the richest treasure of indulgent heaven“.
Tragedy struck the Brentons a month later when the family learned that 14 year-old John Jervis had died of a “fever and sore throat” at his boarding school in Plymouth, England. Mourned in South Africa, the oldest Brenton child had his death reported half a world away in a Halifax newspaper. Nova Scotia had not forgotten Isabella or her family.
The daughter of a Loyalist, Isabella Stewart Brenton had lived through “interesting times” and had been an eyewitness to history in Maryland, New York, Nova Scotia, England, and South Africa. Born in Maryland, she had married a man raised in Rhode Island, given birth to children in England, and spent her final years in South Africa.
The stories of the fathers of both Isabella and Jahleel Brenton will be told in the next editions of Loyalist Trails.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

Was the last battle of the American Revolution fought in India?
A growing number of historians think so
By Brad Lendon, 4 July 2023 on CNN
Final Jeopardy category: the American Revolutionary War.
The answer is: The last battle of America’s war of independence was fought on this continent.
Cue the familiar music, and write down your response.
If you said “What is North America?” and wagered your entire pot, you’ve lost. At least that’s what a growing number of historians will tell you.
They’ll say the correct response should have been, “What is Asia?”
Ummm, what?!
Listen to Kathleen DuVal, professor of history at the University of North Carolina (one of the 13 original states, just saying).
“Americans and almost all historians of the United States until just recently focused almost exclusively on the Revolutionary War within the 13 colonies that rebelled against the British. The focus was almost all on Massachusetts and Virginia,” she says.
“But in just the past decade or two, historians have broadened their focus and started to write about the Revolutionary War as being, as you say, a world war,” DuVal says.
Scholarly works back that up. In 2018, Smithsonian Books published “The American Revolution: A World War,” a collection of essays from 17 authors from eight countries that gives “a multifaceted but coherent account of the American Revolution’s international geopolitics,” according to a review in the Journal of American History. Read more…
Suggested by Kevin Wisener and Stephen Davidson

Were Loyalists All – or mostly – English?
E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. Not a bad thing to remember on this date. I was reminded of this while speaking at Fort Montgomery last week. A very nice lady at the end of my talk asked me quite sincerely why the Loyalists just “didn’t go back to England” after the war. The question told me a couple things.

  • One: I need to stress more that the vast majority of Loyalists were born in America and had never been to England.
  • Two: that a great many Loyalists were not English at all, but reflected the totality of American society of the time.

Their ancestry could just as easily be Dutch, French, German, Polish, Swiss, Swedish, Danish or Mediterranean, not to mention African, as any who were English, Irish or Scottish. The document below shows a group of German Marylanders, some of whom made the ultimate sacrifice, for a British king, after the war had more or less been decided…
James Dunbar late of the 76th Regiment, being duly sworn on the holy Evangelists of Almighty God deposeth and saith, that in the Month of May 1782 he this Deponant was a Prisoner on Parole in the Town of Frederick in the County of Frederick in the late Province of Maryland, that he this Deponant during the Time he remained in that situation in the said Town heared it repeatedly mentioned by different Inhabitants of good repute, residing there, that in the Year 1781 a Plot had been discovered by one or more of the disaffected People of that Country, of a number of Loyalists having secretly inlisted a considerable number of men – to serve his Majesty in America during the Rebellion, under them as their Officers whenever they should be called upon by the General commanding in Chief the Kings Forces [in] North America for the time being, that divers of these Officers and several of their Privates had been seized and imprisoned in the said Town and were afterwards tried by a Court of Oyer and Terminer held in and for the said Country and that Caspar Fritze, Yoost Plecker, Adam Graves, George Graves, Nicholas Andres, Henry Shell and Peter Sueman, all Germans, were then and there convicted of having in the said Country inlisted men in his Majesty’s Service as aforesaid and were sentenced “To be hanged on the Gallows of Frederick Town, to be cut down alive, that their entrails should be taken out, and burnt, that their heads should be cut off, their bodies devided into four parts and their Heads and Quarters placed where the Governor should appoint.”
That the Governor and Council had mitigated that sentence to hanging only, and that the said Casper Fritze, Yoost Plecker and Peter Sueman were actually hanged by the neck untill they were dead, and that the said Adam Graves, George Graves, Nicholas Andres and Henry Shell, were by the said Governor and Council first respited and afterwards reprieved on condition of being transported for life, on Board of a French Man of War, from which they had made their escape.
And this Deponant further saith, that during his stay in the said Town of Frederick he at different times had seen two Women at the House of a Loyalist which he was informed were the Wives of Adam Graves and George Graves. That they came into the Town and went out of it again privately for fear of being insulted by some violently disaffected People living there.
That he this Deponant during his stay in that Town always heard the said Adam Graves and George Graves spoken of, as real Loyalists, men of good Character and of considerable Property, the latter of which was confiscated and sold in consequence of the active part they had taken in behalf of the King and Government of this Country, and the proceedings had against them. And further this Deponant saith not.
Jas. Dunbar
Sworn before the Commissioners of
American Claims at their office
Lincoln’s Inn Fields June 10th 1785
Charles Monro
Asst. Secretary
Source: Great Britain, The National Archives, Audit Office, Class 13, Volume 60, Part II, folios 212-213.
Todd Braisted

The Loyalist Wardle House in Shrewsbury New Jersey
The Wardle House in Shrewsbury New Jersey (with photo) was built in 1764 by my sixth Great-Grandfather Judge John Wardle. John’s Father Joshua had come to Shrewsbury with family members from Barbados in 1732. John was the grandson of Thomas Wardle, one of the earliest English settlers in Barbados in 1635, who had served on the first Executive Council of Barbados in 1640.
The family helped build the first Anglican Church in Shrewsbury which is still standing. John was not only an Attorney but also an architect. The home was, when built, according to the archives ” the finest home in town”. John was the Judge for Monmouth County with Shrewsbury being the county capital. Shrewsbury is located nearly directly across from New York City by the ocean.
During the American Revolution 1776-1783 John and the entire Wardle family were ardent Loyalists. They all spoke out strongly against the Revolution and in support of King George III and fought against George Washington and the rebel forces. Many family members joined the Loyalist New Jersey Volunteers Regiment.
As the rebels gained the upper hand in that area John was arrested and placed in a Loyalist Concentration Camp in Philadelphia from which, with assistance, he escaped within the year and was able to get to safety in New York City, a Loyalist stronghold during all of the Revolution.
The rebels seized all of the Wardle family properties in the name of “peace, freedom and liberty”. They received no compensation but the Judge was successful with a claim to the Loyalist Claims Commission in England.
His two sons Cornelius and Michael travelled with other Regimental members on a ship from New York in October 1783 to Saint John New Brunswick and on to St.Anne’s Point which is now Fredericton. They had been trained as civil engineers.
A few years later they were asked by the first Lt.Governor of Upper Canada (now Ontario) John Graves Simcoe to come to York, now Toronto, to organise the construction of roads from York to Niagara and York to London which Simcoe founded. They were given Loyalist land grants in the eastern area of what is now Toronto. Thus the Wardle family is one of the longest time families in Toronto.
The Wardle property in Shrewsbury is an historic site of New Jersey, now “owned” by the municipality which uses it for the electricity and water department!
I would like to visit there sometime and demand that the property be given back to its rightful owners – the family of Judge John Wardle.
Thomas A.M. Wardle

Loyalist Women, Exile, and Marriage in the Post-Revolutionary World
By G. Patrick O’Brien 17 February 2023 at Age of Revolutions

“Those Who Did Not Extend Their Connections Were the Happiest”:

In early September 1788, Hetty (née Robie) Sterns took a moment out of her busy day to scribble a short reply to a letter she had received from her mother, Mary Bradstreet Robie, in Massachusetts. From her home in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Sterns could only “snatch a few moments” as she juggled caring for two young children, one of whom had not fully recovered from a frightening illness that had reduced the girl “to a mere skeleton.” Fortunately, Sterns believed that the worst of the sickness had abated, and with one crisis averted, she turned her attention to the “shocking” and “unexpected” news her mother relayed from New England. “My tears flow as I write,” she explained, “I must take my leave. It is wrong for me to dwell up on the subject.” “What shall I say upon the subject of losing my dearest sister?” she asked.
Despite Sterns’ mournful prose, her older sister, Mary, was not dead. Instead, she had recently agreed to marry Joseph Sewall, a merchant from a prominent New England family. In sharp contrast to Sterns’ grief, her mother approached the coming union with almost palpable jubilation. “It affords me a satisfaction I did not expect to receive in this life,” Robie wrote of the engagement, “as I think she has a greater chance for happiness with him than I ever expected would fall to the lot of a child of mine.” Sterns could not share her mother’s excitement. She did not fault her sister; after all, as a married woman herself, Sterns recognized that marriage and motherhood were necessary rites of passage for women who hoped to shed the confines of her father’s home. As she explained, “Happiness is not the lot of many in this world, and if she had the prospect of it, no one can or ought to blame her for grasping at the hold.” But the news caused Sterns to reflect on her own nuptials: a bond which bound her to Halifax and to exile. “Trials like those I have lately experienced have almost, for a time, led me to think that those who did not extend their connections were the happiest,” Sterns lamented.
Exploring how sisters Mary and Hetty Robie “extended their connections” demonstrates that although white loyalist women mirrored both their male loyalist counterparts and women across the Anglo-Atlantic and in many ways, their experience as exiles intimately affected their approach to marriage in two distinct ways. Read more…

British Soldiers Wounded at Eutaw Springs
by Don N. Hagist 6 July 2023 Journal of the American Revolution
After the Battle of Eutaw Springs in South Carolina on September 8, 1781, the commander of the British forces reported, among other casualties 313 rank and file (that is, corporals and private soldiers) wounded and another 224 missing.[1] While surviving muster rolls can be used to determine which men were killed in a battle, it is rare to be able to identify individual British soldiers who were wounded—which in turn makes it impossible to know how many of those wounded men returned to fight another day.
A seldom-used source for this type of information is the discharge documents for British soldiers who received army pensions. When a soldier was discharged from the army, he obtained a document—usually a printed form with details written in—to prove that he was legally released from his service obligation. Included on the discharge was the man’s name, age, place of birth, trade, length of service, sometimes some descriptive information such as height and hair color, and the reason that he was no longer fit to serve in the army. When a man received an army pension, the pension office retained a copy of the discharge; today, many of these documents survive for men discharged after 1785.
Among the thousands of surviving discharges for British soldiers who served in America are a few that tell the place and date where the man was wounded. And among these, ten have been found that record wounds received at the Battle of Eutaw Springs. Read more…

Important Revolutionary War André Capture Medal
Donated to the Citizens of New York
Revolutionary Westchester 250
We are excited to share the news that the 1780 Fidelity Medal awarded to Isaac Van Wart, one of the captors of the British spy, Major John André, has been donated to the New York State Museum in Albany. The medal was donated by the estate of Rae Faith Van Wart Robinson, late of Westchester and a direct descendant of Van Wart, consistent with Robinson’s stated wishes.
The medal is one of three ordered to be struck by the United States Congress on November 3, 1780 in gratitude for Van Wart’s role in the capture of André. The British spy was captured in Tarrytown on September 23, 1780 by Issac Van Wart, John Paulding and David Williams. André was carrying papers in the handwriting of American General Benedict Arnold intended to aid the British in an attack on the American fort at West Point. André’s capture led to the discovery of the Arnold’s treason. Read more…
Suggested by Ken MacCallum who notes:

Isaac (the “Captor”) Van Wart was the first cousin of my 5-x great-grandfather Jacob Van Wart, who was a Loyalist from Cortland Manor, New York to Queens County, New Brunswick. Jacob served as a 1st Lt. in the (“Patriot”) Third Regiment of the Westchester County Militia, at one point under the hapless Captain Boyd who spent the night with Andre before Andre’s capture. Jacob inexplicably went over to the British at about the time of the June 1779 attacks on Crompond in Westchester County and served with DeLancey’s Refugees, before going to New Brunswick in the Fall Fleet. I believe that most, if not all, Canadian Van Warts are descended from him. I hope to finish my book about him this year.

Was the Declaration of Independence Signed on July 4? How Memory Plays Tricks with History
by Ray Raphael 4 July 2023 Journal of the American Revolution
Early in 1814, thirteen years into his retirement, John Adams received a bizarre letter from Thomas McKean, a former colleague in the First and Second Continental Congresses. “I will give you an historical fact respecting the declaration of Independence, which may amuse, if not surprize,” McKean wrote. “In the printed public journal of Congress for 1776, vol. 2 it appears, that the Declaration of Independence was declared on the 4th of July 1776 by the Gentleman, whose names are there inserted, whereas no person signed it on that day.” (Emphasis added.) He then listed seven men whose names were affixed to the document but were not even present. McKean, on the other hand, had been “present in Congress on the 4th of July, & voted for Independence.” If others had signed it on that day, he certainly would have as well—and yet, mysteriously, his name had not been included on the list of signers in the July 4, 1776, entry of the Journals of Congress that was published in 1778. Read more…

Fourth of July in 2026
Three Historians offer perspectives at Ben Franklin’s World
How are historians thinking about the American Revolution for 2026? What are they discussing when it comes to the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding? Listen in…

Book: Skohere and the Birth of New York’s Western Frontier 1609-1731 – Volume II – 1687-1702
By Jeff O’Connor. 398 pp; 26 maps, illustrations and photos
When the Palatines arrived at the Schoharie Valley in 1712, the world they stepped into was a century in the making. This formative period of the valley’s history has never been fully told, nor has the true impact these rebellious German refugees had on pushing New York’s western frontier as far as they did, as fast as they did. Until now.
The three-volume series “Skohere and the Birth of New York’s Western Frontier 1609 – 1731” is a trilogy about the Palatines that’s not really about the Palatines. It’s a biography of the Schoharie Valley and the people who helped shape its earliest colonial history.
The Schoharie Valley is one of New York’s three great colonial valleys, its history closely connected to, but overshadowed by, the more famed Hudson and Mohawk. The sweeping narrative that connects a far-reaching network of people and events to an expansive view of Schoharie Valley history continues. Volume II and the series will alter, enhance, and challenge accepted history.
The most controversial period in Provincial New York’s history begins with the Glorious Revolution in England. Provincial New York faces political upheaval just as a new, bloody, war begins. Figures closely related to the Schoharie Valley are thrust into prominent roles during Jacob Leisler’s Rebellion and its lasting impact on New York’s political landscape. Greed, corruption, revenge, and piracy dominate the narrative.
Nicholas Bayard’s Skohere Patent is among several fraudulent Extravagant Grants that sow discord among the Five Nations. The narrative culminates with the return of Mohawks to the Schoharie Valley after a century of vacancy, just as Queen Anne ascends the throne of England and another, even more destructive, war begins.
In the USA, order from and help out Fort Plain. As shipping to Canada is costly, an online bookstore is better.

Loyalist Quarterly Newsletter, June 2023, by Paul J. Bunnell UE
Published since 2004, the June 2023 issue is now available. Seventeen pages, it features:

  • Desperately Seeking Indigenous Allies in the East
  • King Charles
  • Royal family line of succession
  • The Maugerville ‘Declaration of Independence’
  • 1780 Black Camp Rebellion
  • Loyal to a Fault
  • The Loyalist Churches of The Gaspe Peninsula

Vol. 20 Part 2 June 2023 Quarterly Issue “In Publication since 2004”
Editor: Paul J. Bunnell, UE, Author, Koasek Abenaki Chief; BunnellLoyalist@aol.com; 978-337-9085, 49 Pleasant St., #106, Alstead, NH 03602
The Only U.S. Newsletter Devoted to The study of The American Loyalists
Subscription Rate: $22 U.S. $24 Can. $5 each copy — (March, June, September, December issues)

Eighteenth-century bathing machines
By Sarah Murden, 9 April 2019 in All Things Georgian
During the eighteenth and into the nineteenth-century it became fashionable and beneficial to enjoy the pleasures of swimming in the sea so, in order to preserve modesty, bathing machines were invented. These allowed the swimmer to enter the contraption fully clothed, undress and get into the water virtually unseen; to swim then return to the machine to get dressed again and leave through the entrance they had arrived through – all very discreet.
Scarborough, Yorkshire was reputed to have been an excellent place to swim in the 1730s, but as to whether they had bathing machines we’re really not sure. Certainly, by the 1770s as you can see above, the bathing machine was very much in evidence. Read more…

Loyalist Certificates Issued
The publicly available list of certificates issued since 2012 is now updated to end of May 2023.
When a certificate is added there, it is also recorded in the record for the Loyalist Ancestor in the Loyalist Directory.

Upcoming Events

Every Place, A Story: Historic Places Days, July 8-23, A National Canada Event

National Trust for Canada
On July 8 we launched Historic Places Days 2023 and it’s bigger than ever! From July 8-23, we are excited to be working with heritage places and their communities to share the diverse, thought provoking and dramatic stories of Canada, from coast to coast to coast.Historic Places Days is a 2 week festival that features over 650 historic places, 340 Visitlists, and over 193 special events.
Check our those in your area and explore.

St. Alban’s Centre, Hallowed Grounds Café & The Rectory Book Room

Thursday to Sunday in July and August, 9am – 1pm, Weather permitting
Open-air Hallowed Grounds Café for drinks, nibbles and ce cream
Rectory Book Room used books for sale, also CD’s and DVD’sale
Ongoing garage sale – pay what you will
Self-guided tours of church and cemetery
test your skills in the Escape Room
St. Alban’s Centre, 10419 Loyalist Parkway (Hwy. 33), Adolphustown ON

American Revolution Institute: Franco-British Struggle; Lt. Col. Dupleix de Cadignan. Lecture 13 July

Jean-Baptiste Dupleix de Cadignan (1738-1824) entered the French army’s Régiment de Bourgogne-Infanterie as a lieutenant on April 15, 1754, five weeks before his sixteenth birthday. That same day, he began a diary that forms the basis for his over four-hundred page, two-volume journal owned by the Society of the Cincinnati. Commencing in April 1755, when he embarked for Louisbourg, Canada, Dupleix de Cadignan’s journal describes his experience as a prisoner of war in July 1758, his exchange the following year, the American Revolution and more… More and registration…

School of the Loyalist, July 15-16, East Jersey Old Town Village, Piscataway NJ

We are pleased to announce the 3rd incarnation of the School of the Loyalist, a weekend of scholarly presentations and living history, set in beautiful East Jersey Old Town Village, located in Piscataway, New Jersey.
Time to Register!! Hello all! I am pleased we finally have our webpage for the event up and running. See the schedule, speakers and other event details,
We are asking everyone attending to please go to the registration page, which you you will see a link for on the page below. Whether you are a reenactor or a member of the public attending the school, we ask you fill out the applicable areas of the registration form and submit. A reminder that the weekend is free for all to attend, which, given the lineup of speakers, we think is one heck of a deal. Two weeks to go, so we look forward to seeing you soon at East Jersey Old Town

St. Alban’s Centre, Fish Fry Sunday 23 July 5:00pm

Third annual. Open at 4:30 Serving at 5:00,
Tickets $20, only in advance (limited to 100)
Order online or at the Hallowed Grounds Café
10419 Loyalist Parkway (Hwy. 33), Adolphustown ON

For Members: Recorded Presentations

Presentations on Demand (member log-in required)
Toronto and Gov. Simcoe Branches: “Celebrating Loyalist Day in Ontario”
A series of short presentations by members of the branches on June 19, 2023
The presentations about one’s Loyalist ancestor were quite fascinating, about history rather than genealogy. There were several of these.
Other topics included: What and why is Loyalist Day, In 1784, what is now Ontario was largely Quebec – a bit of history about the evolution path to our Ontario today, a Loyalist Prayer, the Declaration of Dependence, The Loyalist Tree at Queen’s Park, the Loyalist Rose.

From the Twittersphere and Beyond

  • SD&G, Cornwall Community Museum and UELAC 1784-2024 Planning Committee checking out the lay of the land for our Living History Events, next June 7-9, 2024 to celebrate the Landing of our Loyalist Ancestors 240 years ago. Site of the 1784-2024 Cornwall UELAC-Cornwall Community Museum Living History Events June 7, 8, 9 June.
  • This summer visit Ross-Thomson House & Store to travel back in time to discover 1780s Nova Scotia & the recently settled town of Shelburne, where thousands of Loyalist refugees began new lives after the American War of Independence.
  • Heritage walking tour and music every Thursday, Saint John NB. Register with the Saint John Arts Centre.
  • Townsends
  • This week in History
    • 3 July 1773 Today in 1775, George Washington rode out in front of the American troops gathered at Cambridge Common, formally taking command of the Continental Army. Congress had appointed Washington commander in chief two weeks prior, instructing him to take charge of the Siege of Boston.
    • 6 July 1773 Colonial newspapers contributed to the perpetuation of slavery. Advertised 250 years ago today: “TO BE SOLD … A Negro Fellow … who has been us’d to wait at Table, he is a very good Cook, and a tolerable Sailor, speaks good English.” (Boston-Gazette 7/5/1773)
    • 6 July 1773 “I pity the poor people who suffer themselves to be duped by a few men who seem to drive things to the utmost extremity against all connexion with the Kingdom…” —Gov. Thomas Hutchinson
    • 7 July 1773, LONDON: Benjamin Franklin notifies the Massachusetts House of Representatives that the King has rejected their petitions.
    • July 7, 1773, Benjamin Franklin told his younger sister in Boston, Jane Mecom, “Your Shortness of Breath might perhaps be reliev’d by eating Honey with your Bread instead of Butter, at Breakfast.”
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