New Brunswick Loyalists

Online Records

 * New Brunswick Loyalist Pensions
 * Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution Lorenzo Sabine, Kennikat Press, Port Washington, 1966. Included in PANB's Biography Database.

Loyalists
When the American War of Independence ended there were refugees, citizens who had supported the British. From 1776 onwards, some were driven out and some fled, seeking refuge in British territory. Nova Scotia had remained more or less loyal to Britain, though many of the inhabitants had come from New England.

However, in 1783 the country’s first “boat people” arrived on the shores of Nova Scotia. British officials had been making some preparations for this influx, though not enough. There was unsettled land north of the Bay of Fundy and so, the so-called “Spring Fleet” of twenty transports sailed from New York, arriving at the mouth of the St. John River in early May.

Between 1783 and 1785, approximately 15,000 loyalists arrived in what would become the colony of New Brunswick. Most of them landed at the mouth of the St. John River, overwhelming the 400 plus civilians and troops living there, and founding the city of Saint John. As they made their way up the St. John River Valley, they also displaced the approximately 5000 people already living in the territory, including settlers from New England, Pennsylvania, Yorkshire, Ireland and other areas of Great Britain; the indigenous Wulstukwuik (Maliseet) and Mi'kmaq, who were forced unto reserves in Oromocto, St. Mary’s and Kingsclear; and the recently returned Acadians, who migrated to Madawaska and elsewhere.

Other loyalists settled in St. Andrews at the mouth of the Passamaquoddy, as well as around Fort Cumberland, along the Miramichi and Petitcodiac rivers, and on the south shore of the Bay of Chaleur. A group of loyalist Quakers resettled in Beaver Harbour. Many loyalists were native-born Americans from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, with smaller numbers from the Southern and New England States. Most were fairly modest - farmers, artisans, small merchants, and disbanded soldiers - who sought social mobility and better opportunities. Together they formed the population of the colony of New Brunswick, which the British authorities partitioned from Nova Scotia on 18 June 1784.
 * The Loyalists of New Brunswick Esther Clark Wright.


 * New Brunswick Loyalists: A Bicentennial Tribute Sharon M. Dubeau.

The Loyalist Collection
Harriet Irving Library University of New Brunswick Loyalist Collection

In Fredericton, New Brunswick, is a repository of Loyalist resources that is unique in Canada. The Loyalist Collection is a special collection on microfilm of British, North American Colonial, and early Canadian primary sources from approximately 1760-1867. Started in the early 1970s, a project to identify, list and microfilm all Loyalist primary sources in the United States, Great Britain and Canada focused on the American Revolution and the early years of Loyalist settlement in British North America.

The Canadian portion of the project ceased in 1976 and some 700 reels of microfilm were deposited in the UNB Library. In 1982 the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada awarded the UNB Library a three-year grant to expand both the Loyalist Collection and the Library’s resources which support Loyalist research, and confirmed the position of the UNB Library as the principal Loyalist research centre in and for Canada. There are now over 3200 reels of microfilm and 700 microfiche in the Loyalist Collection. It is largely unindexed and contains only original sources. However, there are numerous finding aids to records in the Collection. The Loyalist Collection is arranged by five categories of material:


 * Church Records
 * Family Records
 * Military Records
 * Public Records
 * Special Collections

The inventory of the collection is in preparation and may be accessed on the Internet at the Harriet Irving Library. Inquiries regarding the inventory should be directed to the following department:


 * Christine Jack, Manager of Microforms Harriet Irving Library, University of New Brunswick P.O. Box 7500 Fredericton, New Brunswick E3B 5H5 Telephone (506) 453-4834 Email: [mailto:mic@unb.ca mic@unb.ca]

Researchers planning to visit the UNB Library to use the Loyalist Collection and related material should write or telephone in advance.

Revisionist History?
A recent background work, Ronald Rees’s Land of the Loyalists: Their Struggle to Shape the Maritimes (Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2000), is reviewed in The Beaver, April/May 2001, by retired history professor Ann Gorman Condon. She found it “the best popular history of the Loyalists I have read”, but wonders at the end “whether exiles, with their bitterness and longing for former homes, make good trailblazers.”