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Funding Future Knowledge – 2023 Scholarship Challenge, June 1 – September 1, 2023
Today as we highlight the 2023 Scholarship fund raising challenge – Funding Future Knowledge – I would like to tell you a bit about a very successful scholarly editor and historian who we awarded the UELAC scholarship to in 2012.
Christopher Minty is the author of “Unfriendly to Liberty: Loyalist Networks and the Coming of the American Revolution in New York City” (Cornell University Press, 2023) and various peer-reviewed articles. He is now an editor at the Center for Digital Editing at the University of Virginia.
In Unfriendly to Liberty, Christopher F. Minty explores the origins of loyalism in New York City between 1768 and 1776, and revises our understanding of the coming of the American Revolution.
As donors to the UELAC Scholarship Fund and or the Scholarship Endowment fund, your contribution was a stepping-stone for Christopher’s academic career.
Please know that the work we do encouraging Masters and PhD students to apply for the UELAC scholarship and awarding the funds does make a difference.
Thank you for your donations. Our total is growing. Please use this link to see the amount raided to date and the ways to donate: https://uelac.ca/scholarship/donate/
Christine Manzer UE Chair of the Scholarship Committee.

Gerry Adair UE: Recipient of Suzanne Morse-Hines Memorial Genealogy Family History Award
The Suzanne Morse-Hines Memorial Genealogy Family History Award for research in genealogy and family history, and actions towards genealogical success, is exclusive to the UELAC membership. Recipients exemplify Volunteer Excellence and Participation for their contribution to the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada.
Gerry Adair UE, Saskatchewan Branch UELAC
Gerry has long held a passion for genealogy and family history research.
With his wife, the Late Pat Adair, the contributed hours of volunteer time with the Moosomin Branch, Saskatchewan Genealogy Society doing research and offering workshops.
The couple also undertook extensive travel throughout Ontario conducting research in the areas of Napanee and Tamworth where Gerry’s ancestors resided. On research trips, Gerry was most willing to search out information for others that was not readily available online.
In 2020, the Saskatchewan Branch of the UELAC produced a book entitles, “Loyalist Descendants in Saskatchewan”. Gerry was the main editor of this publication and took on the task of indexing family names and genealogical records for more than thirty-two branch members.
Congratulations Gerry.
Read more with photo.

Anthony Stewart and That Detestable Weed: Part One of Three
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
Not too many history books make reference to the Annapolis Tea Party of 1774, but it was so significant that every October 19 it is remembered and celebrated in Maryland’s capital city. Peggy Stewart Day recalls how one of the city’s Loyalist merchants was compelled to run his brigantine aground in Annapolis Harbour and then set fire to it, destroying over 2,000 tons of tea: “that detestable weed”. The ship’s owner had very little choice in the matter. Annapolis’ rebels threatened him with hanging or tarring and feathering if he did not destroy his ship. Threats of violence were especially worrisome, as the merchant’s wife had just given birth to their sixth child three days earlier.
The burning of the Peggy Stewart and its valuable cargo was the low point in the fortunes of a Loyalist named Anthony Stewart. He had immigrated to Maryland from Scotland in 1753 when he was 15 years old. He was the sixth son of James Stewart of Edinburgh, an attorney in the king’s exchequer. 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.
Stewart and his father-in-law 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 2258-acre estate in 1772 that he named “Mount Stewart”. The merchant also owned land in Dorchester County, a warehouse in Londontowne, and a home in Annapolis.
At this point, the future seemed bright for the young couple. Moving into their new mansion, they took their four children: James (born 1765), Margaret (1767), Isabella (1770), and John (1769). Mary was born in the year after the family moved into Mount Stewart. Enslaved Africans would also have worked on the estate.
Just one indicator of Anthony Stewart’s prosperity is the number of portraits that were made of family members. John Hesselius, one of the major American-born artists of the era and an Annapolis plantation owner, painted the images of both Jean Dick Stewart and Anthony Stewart in the 1760s. Passed down through generations of the Loyalist couple’s family, the portraits now hang in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.
Two of Anthony and Jean’s children were the subjects of a portrait by Charles Willson Peale. The latter was the most fashionable portrait painter of the middle colonies and captured the images of sitters such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. In Peale’s portrait, John Stewart and his younger sister Isabella are shown gathering peaches. The painting now hangs in the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain. (The burning of Stewart’s ship became the subject of a painting by Francis Blackwell Mayer in 1896 –more than a hundred years after the destruction of the Peggy Stewart. It is held in the Maryland State Art Collection.)
Although no portrait of Margaret, the Stewart’s oldest daughter, has survived, her name has lived on thanks to the fact that Anthony Stewart named one of his transatlantic brigantines the Peggy Stewart in her honour. It may have been an accolade that she later came to regret.
Anthony Stewart’s difficulties began when the British government imposed a tea tax on its North American colonies. Colonial officials passed resolutions to ban payment of the taxes. Boston’s violent response to the tax was its “tea party” which saw 342 chests of tea dumped into its harbour in December of 1773.
Added to the resentment surrounding the tea tax was the fact that Stewart had revealed his Loyalist political views. He was on record as opposing Maryland’s measures to cease paying debts to the British. As a merchant, he had been concerned that this would damage trade relations.
In October of 1774, Stewart’s trading vessel sailed into Annapolis Harbour. Besides the 53 indentured servants that were passengers aboard the brigantine, there was over 2,000 pounds of tea wrapped in blankets. Some accounts of events say that Stewart had not ordered the tea; others say that it was smuggled on board without the captain’s knowledge.
Word leaked out that the “detestable weed” was on the ship, and consequently, it was not allowed to tie up at the Annapolis wharf for four days while its fate was being discussed. Stewart wanted to unload the rest of the ship’s cargo and its indentured passengers, but he could only do so if he paid the tax on tea. It was the law that no part of a ship’s cargo could be unloaded until the required taxes for parts of the cargo were paid.
Despite printing up a pamphlet of apology for the importation of the tea, Stewart could not quell the growing anger of Maryland’s Patriots.
A mob organized by a local Patriot gathered outside of the Stewart home and threatened to have the Loyalist merchant hanged at his front door if he did not personally burn his own ship and its cargo. The construction of a gallows in front of the house must have been especially terrifying to the Stewart children and to Jean Stewart who had delivered a baby just days before.
In the end, Stewart and his business partners were taken out to where the Peggy Stewart had been run aground, its sails unfurled and the British flag flying from its mast. The Loyalist then set his vessel – worth thousands of dollars– on fire.
John Galloway, a Maryland merchant staying in the Stewart home, witnessed the destruction. “Mr. Stewart went on board of his Vessel and set fire to her with his own hands and she was a burning when I left town.” Galloway felt it was Stewart’s fault for importing the tea, but felt it was “monstrous to destroy” the Peggy Stewart. Galloway wrote that it was an “infamous and rascally affair which makes men of property reflect with horror on their present Situation to have their lives and property at the disposal and mercy of a Mob is shocking indeed.”
Besides the indentured servants who had crossed the Atlantic on the Peggy Stewart, the only thing that was not destroyed in the burning of the vessel was a bowl that a local Loyalist had ordered from a colleague in London. In 2001, the bowl was donated to the Hammond-Harwood House Museum in Annapolis, Maryland.
Anthony Stewart was a marked man following the burning of his ship. It wasn’t long before 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. The Loyalist merchant sought sanctuary in England. He would not return to North America for two more years.
More of the story of Anthony Stewart will be told in next week’s Loyalist Trails.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

Query: William Thomas, Mrs. Clark and dau. Nancy Clark, Digby NS
My ancestor Capt. William Thomas, looks to have been married to a widow, Elizabeth Clark. We know her name was Elizabeth because it appears in the division of William Thomas’s land (see first page). The second page references Nancy Clark “step daughter of the deceased William Thomas & wife of William Clark.” Elizabeth Thomas died 31 March 1821 in Digby NS, her husband, Capt. William Thomas, died 20 years before.
In 1784, there is a Mrs. Clark who receives a land grant in Clements and a William Clark, Jr.,, who receives a land grant in nearby Digby. [See extracted pages.]
Evidently William Thomas left the U. S. alone (see p. 35 https://www.uelac.org/Loyalist-Research/Research-Data/HMS-Clinton-1783-Passengers-Families.pdf) although some people have conjectured online that he married an Elizabeth Waters in Pennsylvania. [I think it is a matter of commonality of names…a William Thomas in the same area marrying an Elizabeth, doesn’t seem extraordinary. Also, I think if that were the case, she would have traveled with him.]
Do you know of any sources that would show that (say) Mrs. Clark had a daughter Nancy? If so, I think we might be able to make some reasonable assumptions that Mrs. Clark became Mrs. William Thomas. Alternatively, if we could show that her land was sold by William Thomas or by an Elizabeth Thomas, we might be able to pull the families together. You might know the resources out there that might correlate things (or disprove my assumptions).
Hoping this doesn’t tie you in knots, I remain yours,
Sumner G. Hunnewell, UE, Arnold, Mo., U. S. A. hildifonstook@prodigy.net

William Howe Letter to John Burgoyne, July 17, 1777
Gen. Sir William Howe sent Gen. John Burgoyne a message written on strips of paper rolled up inside a quill.
Howe said he was headed to Philadelphia instead of up the Hudson to meet Burgoyne.

(See strips. Herewith the transcriptions; See Spies and messages below)
Strip 1:
Lieut. Genl. Burgoyne / New York, July 17th, 1777 Dear Sir, I have received yours of the 2d. inst. on the 15th., have since heard from the Rebel Army of your being in possession of Ticonderoga, which is a great Event carried without Loss. I have recd. your two letters Vizt.[text missing] / & Quebec your last of the 14th. May, & shall observe the contents. There is a report of a messenger of yours to me having been taken, & the Letter discoverd in a double wooded Canteen, you will know if it was of any consequence; nothing of it has transpird to us. I will observe [text missing] / in writing to you, as you propose in your letters to me. Washington is waiting our motions here, & has detached Sullivan with about 2500 men, as I learn, to Albany. – My intention is for Pensilvania where I expect to meet Washington, but if he goes to the Northwd. contrary to my [text missing]

Strip 2:
and you can keep him at Bay, be assured I shall soon be after him to relieve you. After your arrival at Albany, ye. movements of the Enemy will guide yours; but my wishes are that the Enemy be drove out of this Province before any operation takes place in Conecticut. Sr. Heny. Clinton / remains in the command here, & will act as occurrences may direct. Putnam is in the Highlands with about 4000 men. – Success be ever with you. Yours. &c. / W.Howe

Spies and messages
British spies took precautions to conceal the messages they carried. Letters were inserted into the hollow quills of large feathers, sewn into buttons, and stuck into small silver balls. One message, located in Sir Henry Clinton’s manuscripts at the Clements Library, was cut into two long, narrow strips in order to make insertion into a quill easier. The idea seems to have been that, if in danger, a courier could get rid of the papers more easily.
One British spy, carrying a message from Henry Clinton to John Burgoyne in a silver ball the size of a rifle bullet, was captured at New Windsor. He swallowed the silver ball, but was forced to drink a strong emetic. The spy, Daniel Taylor, vomited the ball, instantly snatched it up, and swallowed it again. He agreed to a second dose when the American general threatened to hang him and cut the message out of his stomach. Taylor was court-martialed and sentenced to death for being a spy. He was executed on October 16, 1777, the day before Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga. Clinton’s futile letter was read to American troops when they received word of the British defeat. (from “Quill Letter” at William Clements Library)

George Washington’s Information War
by Benjamin George 18 July 2023 Jpournal of the American Revolution
Information has been as powerful a weapon as any in the history of warfare. Modern militaries continue to grapple with the power of information by developing and incorporating specific information strategies into their warfighting arsenals. In 2017, the U.S. military established information as a warfighting function to define and harness “the military role of information at the strategic, operational and tactical levels within today’s complex operating environment.” While such a step signifies the deliberate effort to integrate more intensively the informational aspects of modern technologies into traditional combat operations, leveraging information for a military advantage is hardly a new phenomenon. Though exquisite technologies and capabilities have altered the applications of information warfare, the underlying principles remain unchanged and can be found in the day-to-day operations of the Continental army during the American Revolution.
At its most basic level, information warfare is the use or manipulation of information to pursue a competitive advantage by influencing targets to make decisions in the interest of those conducting the operation. Military deception, psychological operations, and propaganda are but a few information-related activities that constitute the larger information warfare concept. Read more…

A Study in Sustainability: The Continental Encampment in Bucks County, December 1776
by Colin Zimmerman 20 July 2023 Jpurnal of the American Revolution
The standard interpretation of the Continental Army in the dark and waning months of 1776 often features ragged soldiers, devoid of clothing and basic human comforts, facing harsh winter conditions while encamped in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, prior to crossing the Delaware River. Dramatic imagery of cold and discomfort, with regiments, or what was left of them, camping in a fashion that was a far cry from the organization of their British counterparts, has become the foundation of public memory. Is this the complete picture?
Perhaps this imagery is in part due to the national mythology of the Delaware River crossings and the brilliance of the ensuing battles which followed from December 26, 1776, through January 3, 1777. While certainly there is a level of truth in the accepted interpretation of the desperate nature of the soldiers’ conditions, the reality may be slightly more complex, and can provide an avenue to deepen our understanding of both the realistic capabilities and sustainability of the army based on their physical living conditions and logistics. The truth of the matter, can only be told through a handful of primary sources, each of which provides sparse information on the context and methods in relation to the conditions of the encampment. Read more…

“He has been enabled to contract for a new Sett of neat and elegant Types.”
Advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago
By Carl Robert Keyes 20 July 2023 in The Adverts 250 Project
With Alexander Robertson, James Robertson, and John Trumbull disseminating subscription proposals for a new newspaper, the Norwich Packet, Ebenezer Watson, the printer of the Connecticut Courant in Hartford, faced more competition. The Norwich Packet would bring the total number of newspapers published in the colony to four, including the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy and the New-London Gazette.
Watson already felt as though he “has hitherto laboured under peculiar Disadvantages and Embarrassments, by Reason of the Badness of his Types,” Read more…

‘The buzz, the prattle, the crowds, the noise, the hurry’: the Coronation of George III and Queen Charlotte
The History of Parliament 18 July 2023
Royal celebrations in the Georgian period were renowned for their mixture of stately formality and farcical mix-ups. In the third of our series on 18th-century coronations, we turn to that of George III in the late summer of 1761, which proved no exception, as Dr Robin Eagles points out.
Shortly after 10 pm on 22 September 1761 the doors of Westminster Hall were flung open so the crowds waiting outside could pour in and snaffle what was left of the coronation banquet. Just as had happened at the previous coronation in 1727, pretty much everything was up for grabs and anything not screwed to the floor was liable to be carried off. By then all the principal participants had withdrawn, no doubt exhausted, after their long 12-hour day. Read more…

Anyone for 18th Century Tennis? Colonel Banastre Tarleton: Tennis?
Sarah Murden 20 February 2018 in All Things Georgian
Tennis was all the rage in the mid-1700s, as was gambling, so put the two together and you have a winning combination. The game itself was somewhat different to its format today, however, the concept was the same, with professional players being able to command a high price to display their talent.
For the British, the major competitor was a Mr Tompkyns, but the French dominated the tennis scene, led by Monsieur Masson, born around 1740 and from Paris.
“In March 1790, she took on the notorious Colonel Banastre Tarleton with resounding success.” Read more…

Treaties Between the US & American Indian Nations
By David W. Penney 18 July 2023 in Ben Franklin’s World
David is the Associate Director of Museum Scholarship, Exhibitions, and Public Engagement at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. He’s an internationally recognized scholar and curator with research and curatorial expertise in Native American art history.
During our tour of the Nation to Nation exhibit, David reveals the story behind the National Museum of the American Indian and its creation; Information about the treaty-making process and how Indigenous nations and the United States approach that process; And details about some of the important treaties the United States has created with Indigenous nations and whether the terms of those treaties have been fulfilled. Listen in…

Saline Survivance: The Life of Salt and the Limits of Colonization in the Southwest
by Annabel LaBrecque mid-July 2023 in Common PLacec
The man had never met Ma’lokyattsik’i, but he hardly hesitated as he drove a pickaxe through her heart and toted away her salt. Also known as the Salt Woman or Salt Mother, Ma’lokyattsik’i lived in the form of a salt lake and had long attracted visitors from the pueblos of Zuni, Hopi, Acoma, Laguna, and beyond. These visitors came with care, carrying prayer plumes and gracious sentiments. Puebloan peoples even agreed among one another to leave behind weapons and warfare at their camps and villages whenever they needed salt. Puebloan peoples have long seen the Salt Woman as an animate part of their world. But the man with the pickaxe—a Spanish soldier led by Captain Marcos Farfán de los Godos—saw her as little more than an extractable resource, one that might justify imperial investment and colonial settlement in the continental southwest.
Beginning in the 1530s, Spanish expeditions invaded the North American interior in search of precious metals, profitable lands, and expendable labor. Read more…

Waterfalls, Fashion and Working Dress
An Artistic Interest of Nature: 1740s to 1820s
By Viveka Hansen 18 July 2023 at IKFoundation.org
This picture essay will look more closely at carefully constructed scenes with dramatic waterfalls as a backdrop to centred figures wearing elegant clothing due to their leisure activities as well-to-do tourists. Noticeable are the visual effects of fashionable summer clothes changing in style over the decades, together with the contrast to people in working dress, who were clearly occupied in laundry, farming, fishing or timber construction. Such artworks in natural settings – give impressions of curiosity, amazement, hard labour and even tranquillity at times intertwined with scientific advancement and observations by naturalists. A selection of waterfall scenes in Northern Europe stretching in time from the Enlightenment and up to the 1820s will be represented, with reflections further back in time to Chinese traditions. Depictions of forceful water scenes like these, however, continued to be popular motifs throughout the 19th century and were even more favoured when amateur photography was introduced in the 1890s with small easily operated hand-held cameras. Read more…

UELAC Loyalist Directory: New Contributions
Entries which have been added, or revised, this week, with thanks:

  • Cal Craig has contributed information about added information about Capt. Samuel Bliss born in Concord MA. He served in the 84th Regiment (Royal Highland Emigrants), 2nd Battalion in Nfld, NS, NY and South Carolina. He and his wife Mary Harrod had probably three children. They settled in St. George NB after the war. He is the brother of
  • the Hon Jonathan Bliss who joined the British army at the rank of Colonel and was attached to the commissary department and stationed at Quebec. He married Isabel Murray and they had five children. They settled in Lincoln NB.

If you are willing to submit some information, send a note to loyalist.trails@uelac.org All help is appreciated. …doug

Upcoming Events

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

Grand River Branch Celebrates 50th Anniversary on 17 Sept.

At the Arlington Hotel in Paris, Ontario. Reception & Mingle 4:00 p.m. Dinner 6:00 p.m. Buffet Dinner $50.00 Payable to Grand River Branch UELAC
RSVP Ms Jane Adams, 92 Brewster, Cambridge, ON N3C 3T9
By Sept 1, 2023. Period Costume is encouraged .

From the Twittersphere and Beyond

  • When the first Africans got to VA, corn was already in the diet of the people of West Africa (Columbian Exchange). In the 18th c people living in North Am. grew, processed and ate corn. Enslaved people in VA had a hand in the process by growing the corn and grinding it into meal. JYF Mueums
    • In 1492, Columbus brought the Eastern and Western Hemispheres back together. The resulting swap of Old and New World germs, animals, plants, peoples, and cultures has been called the “Columbian Exchange.” Humans from Asia probably first entered the Western Hemisphere between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago.
  • Townsends
  • This week in History
    • 21 July 1769 “This afternoon. Mrs. Rachel Willson the famous Quaker preacher preachd in Fanewill Hall to at Least Twelve hundred people. She Seems to be A Woman of Good Understanding” – John Rowe diaries, 21 July 1769.
  • Clothing and Related:
    • 18th Century Court Mantua, c.1760, It was probably worn by Mary Holt, wife of the 7th Earl of Haddington and may have been worn at the wedding of King George III to Queen Charlotte in 1761
    • Another day @colonialwmsburg, so #ootd is this 1770-80 robe a la francaise from England. The brocaded silk with lines of roses has a matching petticoat and is paired with this silk stomacher, which has a different but complementary floral pattern
    • 18th Century dress, Round gown of block printed chintz cotton, Dutch, c.1780
    • Detail of an 18th Century dress, Sacque gown a la Piedmontese, c.1780, possibly Italian, plain cream ribbed silk, metallic & silk embroidery.
    • A rare example of an 18th Century women’s banyan, made of Spitalfields silk attributed to designer Anna Maria Garthwaite. c.1750
    • The fluffed floss of fly braid blur the pink florals of 1760s brocade. The technique has always seemed fascinating to me, that these gowns are created out of more than one skilled stitcher, multiple contributors to the whole
    • 18th Century men’s ensemble, delicious red coat, 1787-1792
    • 18th Cent men’s waistcoat, Anna Maria Garthwaite’s original design of this is @V_and_A & identifies not only the artist but also the weaver, Peter Lekeux, & date of sale – Oct 23, 1747. Both were important contributors to Spitalfields silk industry.
    • 18th Century men’s waistcoat, mauve striped silk with silk & metallic thread embroidery, metal beads, silk satin, printed & painted, 1790’s
    • Still thinking about this gorgeous silk embroidered court suit and waistcoat on display in “Crown to Couture” at @HRP_palaces
      . The circa 1790 suit is richly embroidered with flowers, fruit, and wheat sheaves
  • Miscellaneous

 

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