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 »
How do you go about locating where a person lived 240 years ago in a place you’ve never been? This was my situation when I started researching New Brunswick loyalist, Gasper Maybee, who was originally from Bergen County, New Jersey. Through using a series of modern and historical maps, first-hand accounts, and some very helpful local expertise, I was able to pinpoint the area where he grew up and inherited land. Continue Reading »
First brought to Nova Scotia as a young shoot in 1786, the “Bishop Pear Tree” still stands—gnarled but solid—near the edge of the Ken-Wo Golf Club in New Minas, Nova Scotia. The young tree was carried from Connecticut by Peter Bishop Jr. returning with his new wife to Nova Scotia, two hundred and thirty-four years ago. Continue Reading »
Many forgotten and often trivial incidents of daily life can be found by just a quick glance at historical newspapers, including the loss of Basil Rorison’s sorrel mare. Rorison was a member of the provincial loyalist regiment, the King’s Orange Rangers, and misplaced his horse while at Harlem, New York during the American Revolution. We are lucky today that most modes of transportation do not tend to wander off on their own—with our possessions attached! Continue Reading »
