Do you know your loyalist ABCs? This post will familiarize you with some important terms for loyalist history and research!
American Loyalist Claims Commission Continue Reading »
In pandemic days, more and more research has been pushed to online, accessible sources. With this shift in mind, we have created a list of some of the best online resources to use in loyalist research. If you know of other resources, please drop us a line to pass them along. Continue Reading »
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. Continue Reading »
Exactly when Gillam Butler acquired his estate on Campobello Island is uncertain, but there are clues that suggest he was never a destitute loyalist refugee, but rather an opportunistic New Englander who saw the border and a major financial opportunity. Continue Reading »
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. Continue Reading »
In April of 1786, writing to Lord Sydney, the British Home Secretary, New Brunswick’s Lieutenant Governor Thomas Carleton complained about “a certain Mr. Continue Reading »
During the seventy years after the Loyalists arrived, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia remained a prosperous, albeit cold and unforgiving. Continue Reading »
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?” Continue Reading »
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. Continue Reading »
There has been a surge of interest in historical handwriting in the past month as people volunteer their time to help institutions with crowd-sourced transcription projects such as Transcribe from the Nova Scotia Archives and the volunteer initiative from the Continue Reading »
