HARTSHORNE, Lawrence: 1755 - 1822
Tile ordered and paid for by Jane Hartshorne, Halifax, Nova Scotia, October 1888
Lawrence Hartshorne, the son of John Hartshorne and Lucy Saltar, was born into a leading Quaker family in the Sandy Hook area of New Jersey. In 1777 he moved to New York City and entered trade. In 1780 he married Elizabeth Ustick.
Although his Quaker religion meant he could not take an active military role during the Revolutionary War, family and business links with the Loyalist and British military establishment prompted Hartshorne to join the Loyalist exodus from New York in 1783.
He established himself as a hardware dealer in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and also received grants of several thousand acres of land and became proprietor of a model farm located on the outskirts of Dartmouth.
After the great influx of Loyalists to Nova Scotia, many of the 2,500 black Loyalists who settled there were suffering extreme hardship. Lawrence Hartshorne acted as chief assistant to John Clarkson in a project organized by Britain’s Sierra Leone Company to repatriate to Africa those black Loyalists who wished to leave the province. Hartshorne appears to have been motivated by a Quaker-inspired concern for blacks and by a belief that their advancement could best be achieved with a return to Africa. About 1,200 blacks left the province and travelled to Freetown, Sierra Leone. Also active in politics, Hartshorne was elected to the House of Assembly for Halifax County in 1793.
Lawrence moved to Dartmouth sometime after 1800 where he presided over a family of three sons and six daughters. After the death of his first wife, he married Abigail Tremain. He continued to have a successful career in the hardware and flour milling business and also became a founder of the association that developed into the Halifax Fire Insurance Company.
The Hartshorne children were baptized into the Church of England and the family acquired a pew at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Halifax. The family remained prominent in the business, political and social life of the Nova Scotian capital into the middle years of the nineteenth century and entertained lavishly at their Dartmouth estate.(1)
Lawrence Hartshorne died at his home in Dartmouth, March 10, 1822.(2)
1. “Hartshorne, Lawrence,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
2. “Lawrence Hartshorne,” wikipedia.org (accessed June 2011).