Loyalists A to Z, Part 1

On 14 Apr, 2021 2 Comments

Do you know your loyalist ABCs?  This post will familiarize you with some important terms for loyalist history and research!

American Loyalist Claims Commission

Spirits to Sustain Us, Acorns to Restore Us

On 6 Jan, 2021 0 Comments

We are living in strange times. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused us to re-consider our values and has sent many in search of ‘the good life.’ We are looking for ways to live better, to live healthier, and to live longer. This is hardly a new preoccupation for human contemplation and experimentation.

Loyalist Borderlands on Campobello Island: The Ordeal of Gillam Butler, Part Two

On 9 Dec, 2020 0 Comments

To fully grasp the kind of place that Gillam Butler lived, it is useful to imagine New Brunswick’s southwesterly edge, including the Fundy Isles, as a kind of loyalist borderland. The fishing outports of mainland Charlotte County, Grand Manan, Deer and Campobello islands have long been sites to congregate in Indigenous trading networks, transatlantic commerce, and European imperial warfare.

Radical German Loyalism in the American Revolution

On 17 Jun, 2020 3 Comments

It is terribly easy for scholars to ‘miss the forest for the trees.’ About a month ago, I emerged from my den of research to give a biographical presentation about Christopher Sauer III. At the end of my talk, I was caught off guard by an obvious, down-to-earth question. “Why,” my sensible classmate asked me, “was a German so loyal to the British cause in the American Revolution?”

Named in Freedom: Children in the Book of Negroes

On 6 May, 2020 0 Comments

Often, we can only guess at what children of the past experienced in their young lives as it was not usual for them create documents of their own.  This was poignantly true for the children of the African Diaspora during the eighteenth century.  A record as basic as a name, however, can offer a way into an historical culture.

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