Home > United Empire Loyalists

In the United Kingdom, a Commission for Claims and Losses was established to compensate loyalists if they would relinquish their claims to the British government -- but only about 2000 claims were made. The rest, an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 claims, remain unresolved to this day.

1 Numbers

farmers" of Concord and Lexington, the Loyalists numbered one-third of the whole population of the colonies, or seven hundred thousand whites.

Others believe that the number was larger, and that the revolutionary party was in a minority even after the declaration of independence. The greater number of the Loyalists were to be found in the present state of New York, where the capital was in possession of the British from September, 1776This article is about the year 1776. For the musical, see 1776 (musical Events January 10 Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense March 17 American Revolutionary War: British forces evacuate Boston, Massachusetts after George Washington places artillery overl, until the evacuation in 1783Events February 3 American Revolutionary War: Spain recognizes United States independence. February 4 American Revolutionary War: Great Britain formally declares that it will cease hostilities with the United States of America. May 18 Saint John, New Brun. They were also the majority in Pennsylvania and the southern colonies of South Carolina and Georgia. In all the other states they represented a large minority of the best class of their respective communities. It is estimated that there were actually from thirty to thirty-five thousand, at one time or other, enrolled in regularly organised corps, without including the bodies which waged guerilla warfare in South Carolina and elsewhere.

2 Settlement in Canada

The British government endeavoured, so far as it was in its power, to compensate the Loyalists for the loss of their property by liberal grants of money and land, but despite all that was done for them the majority felt a deep bitterness in their hearts as they landed on new shores of which they had heard most depressing accounts. More than thirty-five thousand men, women and children, made their homes within the limits of the present Dominion. In addition to these actual American Loyalists, there were several thousands blacks, fugitives from their owners, or servants of the exiles, who have been generally counted in the loose estimates made of the migration of 1783, and the greater number of whom were at a later time deported from Nova Scotia to Sierra LeoneThe Republic of Sierra Leone is a country in West Africa, on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. The country is bordered by Guinea in the north and Liberia in the southeast. Republic of Sierra Leone ( In Detail) (Full size) National motto: Unity Freedom Just. Of the exiles at least twenty-five thousand went to the maritime colonies, and built up the province of New Brunswick, where representative institutions were established in 1784Events January 6 the Turks agree to Russia's annexation of the Crimea in the Treaty of Constantinople January 14 The U. Congress ratifies the Treaty of Paris with England to end the American Revolutionary War February 27 Count of St Germain dies of pneumo. Of the ten thousand people who sought the valley of the St Lawrence, some settled in MontrealMontreal (/mVn. tri"Al/ in English, /mO~. re"al/ in French) is the largest city in the province of Quebec, Canada, where it also constitutes an administrative region. It is Canada's second most populous city after Toronto ( Statistics Canada), and the sec, at Chambly, and in parts of the present Eastern Townships, but the great majority accepted grants of land on the banks of the St.Lawrence--from River Beaudette, on Lake St. Francis, as far as the beautiful Bay of QuinteThe Bay of Quinte is on the northern shore of Lake Ontario. Located about 200 kilometers from Toronto and 400 from Montreal, the Bay of Quinte is a long, thin bay in the shape of a letter "Z". The northern side of the bay is defined by the mainland, while--in the Niagara District, and on the shores of Lake Erie. The coming of these people, subsequently known by the name of "U.E. Loyalists"--a name appropriately given to them in recognition of their fidelity to a United Empire--was a most auspicious event for the British-American provinces, the greater part of which was still a wilderness. There was in the Acadian provinces, afterwards divided into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, a British population of only some 14,000, mostly confined to the peninsula. In the valley of the St. Lawrence there was a French population of probably 100,000 persons, dwelling chiefly on the banks of the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal. The total British population of the province of Quebec did not exceed 2000, residing for the most part in the towns of Quebec and Montreal. No English people were found west of Lake St. Louis; and what is now the populous province of Ontario was a mere wilderness, except where loyal refugees had gathered about the English fort at Niagara, or a few French settlers had made homes for themselves on the banks of the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair. The migration of between 30,000 and 40,000 Loyalists to the maritime provinces and the valley of the St. Lawrence was the saving of British interests in the great region which England still happily retained in North America.

The refugees who arrived in Halifax in 1783 were so numerous that hundreds had to be placed in the churches or in cabooses taken from the transports and ranged along the streets. At Guysborough , in Nova Scotia--so named after Sir Guy Carleton--the first village, which was hastily built by the settlers, was destroyed by a bush fire, and many persons only saved their lives by rushing into the sea. At Shelburne, on the first arrival of the exiles, there were seen "lines of women sitting on the rocky shore and weeping at their altered condition." Towns and villages, however, were soon built for the accommodation of the people. At Shelburne, or Port Roseway--anglicised from the French _Razoir_--a town of fourteen thousand people, with wide streets, fine houses, some of them containing furniture and mantel-pieces brought from New York, arose in two or three years. The name of New Jerusalem had been given to the same locality some years before, but it seemed a mockery to the Loyalists when they found that the place they had chosen for their new home was quite unsuited for settlement. A beautiful harbour lay in front, and a rocky country unfit for farmers in the rear of their ambitious town, which at one time was the most populous in British North America. In the course of a few years the place was almost deserted, and sank for a time into insignificance. A pretty town now nestles by the side of the beautiful and spacious harbour which attracted the first too hopeful settlers; and its residents point out to the tourist the sites of the buildings of last century, one or two of which still stand, and can show many documents and relics of those early days.

Over 12,000 Loyalists, largely drawn from the disbanded loyal regiments of the old colonies, settled in New Brunswick. The name of Parrtown was first given, in honour of the governor of Nova Scotia, to the infant settlement which became the city of St. John, in 1785, when it was incorporated. The first landing of the loyal pioneers took place on May 18, 1783, at what is now the Market Slip of this interesting city. Previous to 1783, the total population of the province did not exceed seven hundred souls, chiefly at Maugerville and other places on the great river. The number of Loyalists who settled on the St. John River was at least ten thousand, of whom the greater proportion were established at the mouth of the river, which was the base of operations for the peopling of the new province. Some adventurous spirits took possession of the abandoned French settlements at Grimross and St. Anne's, where they repaired some ruined huts of the original

the settlement of Fredericton, which four years later became the political capital on account of its central position, its greater security in time of war, and its location on the land route to Quebec. Many of the people spent their first winter in log-huts, bark camps, and tents covered with spruce, or rendered habitable only by the heavy banks of snow which were piled against them. A number of persons died through exposure, and "strong, proud men"--to quote the words of one who lived in those sorrowful days--"wept like children and lay down in their snow-bound tents to die."

A small number of loyal refugees had found their way to the valley of the St. Lawrence as early as 1778, and obtained employment in the regiments organised under Sir John Johnson and others. It was not until

Canada. They settled chiefly on the northern banks of the St. Lawrence, in what are now the counties of Glengarry, Stormont, Dundas, Grenville, Leeds, Frontenac, Addington, Lennox, Hastings and Prince Edward, where their descendants have acquired wealth and positions of honour and trust. The first township laid out in Upper Canada, now Ontario, was Kingston. The beautiful Bay of Quinté is surrounded by a country full of the memories of this people, and the same is true of the picturesque district of Niagara.

Among the Loyalists of Canada must also be honourably mentioned Joseph Brant (Thayendanega), the astute and courageous chief of the Mohawks, the bravest nation of the Iroquois confederacy, who fought on the side of England during the war. At its close he and his people settled in Canada, where they received large grants from the government, some in a township by the Bay of Quinté, which still bears the Indian title of the great warrior, and the majority on the Grand River, where a beautiful city and county perpetuate the memory of this loyal subject of the British crown. The first Anglican church built in Upper Canada was that of the Mohawks, near Brantford, and here the church bell first broke the silence of the illimitable forest.

The difficulties which the Upper Canadian immigrants had to undergo before reaching their destination were much greater than was the case with the people who went direct in ships from American ports to Halifax and other places on the Atlantic coast. The former had to make toilsome journeys by land, or by bateaux and canoes up the St. Lawrence, the

interior of the United States to the new Canadian land. The British government did its best to supply the wants of the population suddenly thrown upon its charitable care, but, despite all that could be done for them in the way of food and means of fighting the wilderness, they suffered naturally a great deal of hardship. The most influential immigration found its way to the maritime provinces, where many received congenial employment and adequate salaries in the new government of New Brunswick. Many others, with the wrecks of their fortunes or the pecuniary aid granted them by the British government, were able to make comfortable homes and cultivate estates in the valleys of the St. John and Annapolis, and in other fertile parts of the lower provinces. Of the large population that founded Shelburne a few returned to the United States, but the greater number scattered all over the provinces. The settlers in Upper Canada had to suffer many trials for years after their arrival, and especially in a year of famine, when large numbers had to depend on wild fruits and roots. Indeed, had it not been for the fish and game which were found in some, but not in all, places, starvation and death would have been the lot of many hundreds of helpless people.

Many of the refugees could trace their descent to the early immigration that founded the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. Some were connected with the Cavalier and Church families of Virginia. Others were of the blood of persecuted Huguenots and German Protestants from the Rhenish or Lower Palatinate. Not a few were Highland Scotchmen, who had been followers of the Stuarts, and yet fought for King George and the British connection during the American revolution. Among the number were notable Anglican clergymen, eminent judges and lawyers, and probably one hundred graduates of Harvard, Yale, King's, Pennsylvania, and William and Mary Colleges. In the records of industrial enterprise, of social and intellectual progress, of political development for a hundred years, we find the names of many eminent men, sprung from these people, to whom Canada owes a deep debt of gratitude for the services they rendered her in the most critical period of her checkered history.