Loyalist Trails UELAC Newsletter, 2011 Archive

In this issue:
- Three Maritimer Centenarians -- © Stephen Davidson
- A Current Day Connection to Sampson Salter Blowers
- Sarah Barlow (1746 - 1821), wife of Silas Raymond: Fifth Generation in America © George McNeillie
- Recollections of My Childhood Home, by Clementine (Stymiest) Lacey: Part 6 -- © Carl Stymiest
- New Post For Peter Milliken
- Loyalist Military Resource: American Loyalist Troops 1775-84
- Local Photographer Captures Royal Tour in Ottawa; Photos Available
- Loyalist Flag in PEI Crowd Greeting Royals
- Mayflower Survey Results
- Interesting Word Derivation: Pedigree
- 2011 Adams Family Reunion
- War of 1812 Commemorations and Tribute Song to Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell
- Book Recommendations for Summer Reading
- The Tech Side: Your Very Own Genealogy Website – by Wayne Scott, UE
- Additions to the Loyalist Directory
- Last Post: Muriel Gertrude Boggs

Three Maritimer Centenarians -- © Stephen Davidson

It is incredible that the psychological and physical stresses the loyalists suffered did not send their entire generation to an early grave. That they lived long lives is noteworthy, that some loyalists lived to be over a hundred years old is truly amazing.

One of the most outstanding examples of a loyal centenarian is Daniel Weekes of Long Island, New York. According to the New Brunswick Courier of January 24, 1852, Weekes drew his last breath at the age of 117. Born on December 3, 1735; by the time he was twenty-four, the hardy Long Islander was serving with the British troops commanded by General Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham.

Weekes returned home secure in the knowledge that he need never protect his home from invading forces again. However, he had not counted on his neighbours rising up against him. In the year that Weekes turned forty-one, rebels issued the Declaration of Independence. The seasoned veteran "adhered to the royal cause" as he had done under Wolfe. Consequently, in 1783, Weekes and his family of 21 children were among thousands who had to seek refuge in Nova Scotia. There he received a grant of land along the Atlantic coast at Ship Harbour just east of Halifax. Weekes and his wife lived to see their great-grandchildren and their great-great grandchildren.

According to the newspapers of the day, Weekes "enjoyed his second sight" at the age of 103, and was seen going "bareheaded into the woods to cut timber" right up until just days before his death on December 29, 1852.

Perhaps there was something invigorating in the onshore winds of Nova Scotia, for just to the west of Weekes' home there lived a centenarian in the Black Loyalist settlement of Preston. In 1791, this unnamed woman celebrated her 104th birthday. We only know of her existence because of an entry in the journal of the British abolitionist, Lt. John Clarkson. He had come to Nova Scotia in the fall of 1791 to oversee the transferral of almost 1200 Black Loyalists to the west African colony of Sierra Leone.

As the fleet of fifteen vessels was journeying across the Atlantic, Clarkson was invited to have dinner with the captain of the Eleanor. There his journal records that he met "an old woman of 104 years of age who had requested me to take her {to Sierra Leone} --that she might lay her bones in her native country-- begged to be brought on deck to shake hands {with me}".

By working backwards from these dates, we can determine that this woman was in her 90s when the loyalists first arrived in Nova Scotia, and was in her 80s during the Revolution. Somehow during the war, this octogenarian had made her way to the British lines, served the crown for a minimum of a year, and earned her freedom.

Lt. Clarkson noted earlier in his journal that Preston's Black Loyalists, "the flower of the Black people", were going to be put on the Eleanor. This means that the African centenarian was probably one of those who had been evacuated from South Carolina in the last months of 1782, as these were the blacks who established Preston to the east of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Given that only the young and strong could survive the horrible conditions of the Atlantic Crossing, this unnamed African could not have been more than a teenager when she was sold into slavery, placing her arrival in America sometime before 1710. She had been enslaved for over 70 years! Filled with abuse and hardship, this woman's life ended in freedom and joy when she stood once more on African soil in the land of her childhood.

Not all African centenarians were able to return to the land of their birth. In the August 30, 1862 issue of the Carleton Sentinel, readers learned of the death of a man who was over one hundred years old. Moses Hodges, "a coloured man", had died a few days earlier in Bloomfield, a village founded by loyalists along the Kennebecasis River. The Sentinel went on to report that "he came to the province with one of the loyalist families in 1776 having been a slave previous to that on a southern plantation." As Hodges name was prominent in Norfolk County, Virginia, it may have been Moses' birthplace.

If he was enslaved by a loyalist family that arrived in New Brunswick in 1783 (then a part of Nova Scotia), Hodges would have been 21 years-old at the time. If Hodges did, in fact, arrive as early as the Sentinel reported, he must have travelled with the loyalists who fled Boston in 1776 to seek refuge in Halifax, making him only 14 years old.

Whatever his age upon arrival in the northern colonies, Moses Hodges witnessed more than 80 years of transformation, watching the first loyalist province grow from a forested wilderness into one of the greatest shipbuilding centres of the British Empire. During his lifetime, he would also have watched the practice of slavery wither and die. Antislavery legislation was passed in Upper Canada (Ontario) in 1793 and in Lower Canada (Quebec) in 1803. Four years later, the trading of slaves was abolished within the British Empire. In 1827, anyone found participating in the slave trade would be executed. By 1834, the British crown had set free all of the enslaved people in the territories it governed.

Moses Hodges came to New Brunswick as a slave, but at some point in his long life he was finally emancipated. If his freedom were granted in 1834, he would have been a man of 72 years. One can only hope that his loyalist masters set him free much earlier. The fact that this once-enslaved man lived to be 100 years of age is almost impossible to believe given the many diseases, the dangers of war, and the backbreaking physical demands of pioneering that he would have had to endure during the Loyalist Era.

To secure permission to reprint this article, email Stephen Davidson.

A Current Day Connection to Sampson Salter Blowers

I was much interested in Stephen Davidson's piece on Sampson Salter Blowers in last week's (June 3) issue of Loyalist Trails. As a teenager living in Toronto I got very interested in books of voyages and travels and early maps. I got to know a bookseller on King Street East, Sol (or Saul?) Wenroth who dealt in this sort of thing, and bought from him a three-volume set of voyages to the Pacific that included James Cook's first voyage. On the top right-hand corner of each title page there is a signature. It looked to me at the time to be J. J. Blowers. I moved to Halifax in 1960 to be Curator of the Maritime Museum of Canada, located in the Halifax Citadel. I met my wife-to-be there - she was the secretary to the Superintendent of the Citadel. And I found out that the initials of the signature in the books were not J. J. but S. S.! I also somehow got the information that part of Blowers' library had been sold at auction in Halifax, which is when Mr. Wenroth must have acquired the volumes I bought from him. I also had the information that Blowers had a standing order with the publisher of the volumes I bought, Stachan and Cadell, to get copies of their latest productions.

It happened in 1960 that the Blowers house on Barrington Street in Halifax was demolished. I was able to salvage parts of two parlour archways from it, from which I was able to reconstruct one complete one. This was later installed in our house at Glen Margaret, along with a mantel from the Blowers house. We saw them in the house several years' ago - it is now a B. & B. with a pillow shop on the ground floor. This house is located at the north side of the Wayside Camp Ground. I also salvaged a first floor door from the Blowers house, which is now the 'funeral door' of our 18th century house at East Haven, Connecticut - hung on its original hinges.

I still have the three-volume set from Blowers' library - their bindings needs restoration. I paid $18.00 for them in 1945. I looked them up on the Internet, and they could now be worth some thousands of dollars!

...John and Marion Stevens.

Sarah Barlow (1746 - 1821), wife of Silas Raymond: Fifth Generation in America © George McNeillie

-- Barlow Ancestry --

I have never been able to find any reliable information as to the ancestry of Sarah Barlow, the wife of Silas Raymond. The record if the old family bible at Woodstock shows that she was born on January 18, 1746, but it does not say where she was born, or who her parents were. Cousin John Raymond of Hampton, who was the first to interest me in the Raymond ancestry, and who himself made a considerable study of the subject did not know where Sarah Barlow was born, or where her people formerly lived. Grandfather Raymond did not appear to know either, which is still more remarkable. He once told me he thought she was born in Stamford, Connecticut; but the Stamford historian does not I think mention the name of Barlow in his book, although I know that there were those of the name in New England at quite an early date. Some have supposed that she was English born, but this too seems doubtful. All agree that she was an admirable wife and mother, and an exemplary member of her Church. She kept the old Kingston Church in order very largely with her own hands. [Note -- an earlier excerpt from Raymond's book on Sarah Barlow will be featured in the next instalment].

Her husband, Silas, and her children used to talk of her with pride and affection. The youngest of her children, Aunt Mary Ann Crawford, used often to talk to her daughter Susan about her own mother, whom she seemed much to admire.

[The following email from the late Edson Barlow of Rochester, Michigan was sent to George McNeillie in 2007 in response to an inquiry about the origins of Sarah Barlow. Barlow was a chronicler of the Barlow family in North America. He died in January 2009, but back issues of his newsletter are available online]

"Dear George McNeillie,

"The origins of Sarah Barlow are, indeed, a mystery.

"There were two early Barlow families in Connecticut. John Barlow immigrated about 1635 and settled in the town of Fairfield in Fairfield County, Connecticut. George Barley immigrated about 1680 and settled in the town of Milford in Fairfield County (all of his descendants changed their name to Barlow after the third generation). I am a descendant of John Barlow and I have been trying to sort out these families for a number of years.

"Since Sarah and Silas went to New Brunswick I would guess that they were Loyalists. All the Connecticut Barlows were revolutionists, as far as I know, although one descendant of George Barley, Abner Barlow, has been erroneously recorded as a Loyalist because he served in the King's Rangers (Rogers' Rangers) before the Revolutionary War. However, I know of one other instance where a wife followed her Loyalist husband to New Brunswick after the Revolution.

"After the initial burst of immigration in the first half of the seventeenth century, there probably was at least a trickle of immigration through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And there should have been Barlows arriving then, but I can find no record of them. After George Barley and John Barlow, the next Barlow immigrants to Connecticut arrived after 1800. So I don't know if Sarah Barlow was the daughter of an immigrant, and there seems to be nothing in the records to suggest it.

"In your email you said that you believed that Sarah was born at Stamford. I have seen information that suggests she was born at Norwalk, although that may have been suggested because Silas was born at Norwalk. There were not many Barlows in the records at either Norwalk or Stamford. Francis Barlow (1702-1793), a descendant of John Barlow, owned land at Norwalk in 1726 but then moved on to Stratford in 1730. Daniel Barlow (1764-1843) was at Stamford in the 1800 census and I don't know who he is yet.

"The Barlows buried at Norwalk were born after 1800. Except for the previously mentioned Daniel, the Barlows buried at Stamford were born after 1800.

"At this point, one starts thinking that there was a large group of Barlows involved in an early witness protection program in colonial Fairfield County. I'm certainly not surprised that your great-grandfather 'was puzzled by the lack of information about from which Barlow family Sarah descends.'

"But if I can share any of my Barlow information, I'd be glad to do so.

"Very cordially, Edson Barlow"

Excerpt from Book of Family History, by The Ven. William Odber Raymond, LL.D, FRSC. © 2009 George McNeillie - all rights reserved [published here with permission; see footnote].

...George McNeillie

Recollections of My Childhood Home, by Clementine (Stymiest) Lacey: Part 6 -- © Carl Stymiest

My Grandmother and I did not get along at all together. So I left and went to work for a neighbor, Mrs. Ruggles. I guess Grandmother was glad to git rid of me, for as I look back now, I know I was stubborn and mean.

My Grandmother was a very strict Church woman (Presbyterian), strict as the Presbyterians were in those days. We had to go to Church twice on Sunday. Read one Chapter in the Bible and commit one verse to memory. We could not play any games. On Sunday there was never any cooked in the house, everything being prepared on Saturday. We had plenty to eat, but all cold food. Sunday seemed awfully long to us. And we were glad when Monday came. Grandmother would not let us go to any of the parties that the other children gave, she thought the place for children was at home. She thought if you danced, your soul was lost forever. And us kids from Canada knew how to dance Scotch Reels and French ? and all such dances. There was an old Scotchman at Home in Canada who played the bag pipes, and he taught us children how to do those dances. Mother thought it was all right for us to learn those dances. And so did Father, in fact, he sometimes would dance with us. I told grandmother once, that we used to dance at home. She said she did not care what sinful things we were allowed to do at home, we could not do them in her house.

She used to let my sister and I go to visit Uncle Will Hyde sometimes and Aunt Julia (Uncle Will's wife) used to play the piano for us and Mina and I would dance for her. If grandmother had ever had an inkling of that, we would never have visited Aunt Julia and Uncle Will anymore.

We used to go to Uncle Jim Hyde's quite often. We liked Uncle Jim and Aunt Byrne. They had 3 children, 2 girls and a boy at that time. We used to like to go to Uncle Jim's and play with the children. We used to take them and go gathering hazel nuts and picking wild crab apples. One day when we were crossing the dam where the mills were, Nellie, Uncle Jim's youngest girl (about 5 years old I think), stumbled and fell into the Saw Mill Race. The gate was closed at the time, so the water was not running. The water was about 4 feet deep, Nellie was drownding, so I told the other kids and sister to run and get help and went in and got Nellie and held her head above the water until they came and got us out. I had to stand on my toes to keep my nose above water.

Poor little Nellie was nearly gone, but they worked her over, she was about all right in an hour or so. I got good and wet and I was sure scared that Nellie would die. Aunt Byna and Uncle Jim seemed to think I had done great. But not Grandmother, she gave me an awfull thrashing when I got home because I let Nellie fall into the Race. When, in fact, I was not near her when she did fall in.

I went three terms of three months each at the Ruggles School House, Hyde's Mills District and was about the middle of the Fourth Term when I went away from grandmothers and went to work for Mrs. Ruggles. I was to go to school just the same and did go the short time I was there (about two or three weeks I think).

I had a cousin, my father's nephew, Adam Stymiest, who had come to Wisconsin several years before we did. He was in the Lumber Business up in the northern part of the state. Around Fort MacLac. I think just after I went to Ruggles, Adam came down to see us, and he did not like the idea of me living with Mrs. Ruggles so when he went back, he took me with him to his partners home at Pine Knobs, Wisconsin. His partners name was Sam Taylor and I lived with his mother and father. They were nice old people. They had two sons, Sam and George. George was back East going to college while I was there so I only saw him when he came home Christmas time. The rest of the time there was just Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, I and the hired girl. I started right in going to school and at the end of the term I was through, so as far as the Public School. I never went to school anymore. I studied under Professor Rodgers for a while in Colorado after I got there. Penmanship, Grammar and History and that is all.

Soon after school was out at Pine Knobs, there came an Uncle and Aunt (my mother's sister) and two boys from Colorado on a visit to grandmothers and the other Uncles and Aunts at Hyde's Mills, and just as soon as I heard of them, I got the Pike Peek (sp?) fever.

After a while they came to visit an Aunt who lived near Pine Knobs and I went to see them. Right away I began asking them to take me to Colorado with them. And after a while, they said they would as no one offered any objections. And I sure was a happy girl. About the last week in February, we started for Colorado. There was seven of us, Uncle (David) Bruce, Aunt Ellen (Stymiest), their two boys, my cousin Francis Martell, Cousin Edna Martell, and I. We took the train at Arena for Madison, and from there to Council Bluffs, Iowa. There was no bridge across the Mor? River between Council Bluffs and Omaha, Nebraska.

They had been transporting passengers and baggage across the river with teams on the ice all winter. But at this time the ice was to rotten to bear up under teams so they had built a plank walk about 10 feet wide across the river and to walk across from Council Bluffs to Omaha and carry our own hand luggage. The other baggage they took over in hand carts.

I remember I carried my heavy shawl and my Aunt's 2 canary birds. We were met when we had crossed the river by teams and carried to the U. P. Depot, not much of a depot as I remember it, just a wooden shack. We took the train right a way and finally landed in Jules Burg, Nebraska. That was the end of the railroad travel. We took stage coach from there and next landed in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We were in Cheyenne I think about 3 hours. We went to a hotel and had dinner and got cleaned up, which we surely needed. Aunt Ellen, the boys, and Edna and I stayed in the hotel and rested.

Final Notes on Clementine's Dairy and Family: Although the diary was incomplete, the family appreciated the sharing of this precious family heirloom.

Also spelled as "Clemintina/Clementina," aka (Clementine S). One source records her birth as May 17, 1854.

In the notes of the late Stephen Paul Stymest, (USA researcher and cousin), Steve mentions the copy of the diary written in her own handwriting which is in the family's possession. A copy of this original diary was obtained from Bertha (Price) Stymiest of Tabusintac, NB.

"Clementina married a pioneer westerner, Frank P. Lacey. He was with Ben Arnold, a dispatch carrier for General Crook when the word of the Custer Battle of June 25, 1876 came through. Clementina and her husband left for Fort Fetterman, Wyoming. Four years later, on July 4, 1880 they left the Fort for Spokane, Washington because they had heard of a gold strike in the Coeur d'lene Mountains. It was on that journey that Clementina and her husband visited the scene of the Custer battleground, one of the most disastrous of all battles.

Clementina was separated from her family for as many as twenty years. When she became sick, her husband persuaded her to contact some of the family so she wrote her grandmother for addresses. She located her younger sister, Margaret, with whom she had left New Brunswick, Canada as a child and spent some time with her.

Clementina always wore her hair cut short and rolled her own Bill Durham cigarettes. She liked to entertain the children around her with stories about the Indians. She personally knew many famous people of her day, but she never had any time for Buffalo Bill Cody. She later made her home with a niece in Sheridan, Wyoming and died there in 1938." (Photo of Clementine's Grave Site.)

Source: SLC # 1597644

Clementine was apparently captured by the Indians at one point in time in her life.

It was if Clementine vanished from the face of the earth, however, it was not until many years later she was found, via a crate of fruit with her name on it. It was noticed by a member of the family.

Source: "Notes on The Stymiest Family", Keith Stewart, Campbellton, New Brunswick, 1998.

...Carl Stymiest UE, President, UELAC Vancouver Branch.

Source: "Down by the Old Mill Stream: a Stymiest Chronicle" Copyright 2001 Carl Stymiest, U.E. All rights reserved. Permission granted to UELAC to reprint.

New Post For Peter Milliken

What is our Honorary President Peter Milliken doing since his retirement as the longest-serving Speaker of the House of Commons? In case you missed the small footnote in a national newspaper, Jim Bruce, UELAC Treasurer and an engineer from Queen's University, reports that his his fellow alumnus has been made a Fellow in the School of Policy Studies in Queen's University. In this new post, Mr. Milliken will be teaching, and con ducting research and outreach activities particularly in the fields of governance and policy making in parliamentary democracies. As he was quoted,"I'm thrilled to have an opportunity to do more teaching at Queen's. It's something I've been doing ever since I was elected and I'm happy that I will now be able to do it on a more consistent basis." More details can be found at the Queen's University News Centre.

...FHH

Loyalist Military Resource: American Loyalist Troops 1775-84

Published by Osprey Publishing in 2008 as part of its Men-at-Arms series, American Loyalist Troops 1775-84 is written by Rene Chartrand and illustrated by Gerry and Samuel Embleton. A slim (and inexpensive) paperback, the book is illustrated with black and white photos of historic paintings as well as original colour sketches of loyalist uniforms. More than a visual aid, the book gives the history and organization of the loyalist corps that served in the Thirteen Colonies as well as in the Caribbean. There are detailed maps and a brief chronology of the battles in which the corps fought. Not that I have seen every loyalist graphic, but there were a few surprises among the pictures --including an illustration for the Ethiopian Regiment "uniform" (with "Liberty to Slaves" emblazoned across the shirt in red). If you like to shop online, American Loyalist Troops 1775-84 can be bought at Amazon.ca for $14.56.

...Stephen Davidson

Local Photographer Captures Royal Tour in Ottawa; Photos Available

The recent Royal Tour by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attracted the largest number of photographers and journalists of any Royal Visit. Frank Scheme, a photographer whose work has been published in The Loyalist Gazette, was able to capture a vast number of high quality images during the Ottawa visit. He has offered to members of the Monarchist League and the UELAC a Souvenir CD of photographs taken at a variety of the events. For each member purchasing the CD at a cost of $150.00, Mr. Scheme will make a donation of $50.00 to the Association. Sample images can be found on his website. You are encouraged to contact Mr. Scheme directly, through his website, to make arrangements for this offer.

Loyalist Flag in PEI Crowd Greeting Royals

If you have not already seen it, I thought you would be interested in the CBC video from T.R.H. the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's time in Charlottetown. Note the 1606-1801 pattern Union (Loyalist) Flag very conspicuously in the crowd behind H.R.H. the Duchess of Cambridge in segments from 1:27-1:49. Hopefully the next time T.R.H. the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge tour Canada, they will be in a location where the Abegweit Branch will be able to get us all a nice place along the railing.

...Ed Garrett

Mayflower Survey Results

In the Loyalist Trails UELAC Newsletter 2011-21 May 29, 2011 we conducted a survey to find out if any UE Loyalists could also claim Mayflower ancestors. Here are the results! Thank you to the one hundred and four Loyalist Trails readers who participated in the survey.

With your help we found out that two of our Loyalist Trails readers have proven connections and received certification to both UELAC and the Mayflower Society! The top five Mayflower names with Loyalist ties are Stephen Hopkins; William Brewster; Richard Warren; Constance Hopkins; John Alden.

For more details, click here.

...Bonnie Schepers, Sr. VP

Interesting Word Derivation: Pedigree

Pedigree n. A line of ancestors; descent; lineage; genealogy; a register or record of a line of ancestors. Believed to be derived from the French ped de gru, which meant crane's foot (the modern French equivalent is pied de la grue). The crane's foot is said to resemble the /|\ symbol on genealogical trees. It has also been suggested that it comes from par degrés, the French for by degrees. A pedigree chart records the relationship of families by degrees. For more word fun, visit fun-with-words.com.

...Mark Gallop, Branch Genealogist, Heritage Branch

2011 Adams Family Reunion

Descendants of Dr. Samuel Adams, born in Stratford, Connecticut in 1730, died in Grenville County, Ontario in 1810, are invited to our 61st Annual Reunion, being held on the banks of the Nation River in Spencerville, Ontario. (south of Ottawa) This is a Pot Luck picnic starting at Noon on July 30, 2011. For more information, please contact Barbara at bnk@cogeco.ca.

...Barb Law, UE

War of 1812 Commemorations and Tribute Song to Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell

There will undoubtedly be many websites with information about the commemoration of the War of 1812.

Ontario has been divided into seven regions and each is coordinating activities in its own geographic area. One of these is the Western Corridor Alliance. It runs east west from Burlington and Stoney Creek nearly to Chatham. To the southwest is the Southwestern Ontario Region (Windosr to Chatham); to the north the Southern Georgian Bay Region; to the Southeast the Niagara Region and to the northeast the Toronto Region. Further north is the Algoma Region (Sault Ste Marie) and further east past the Toronto Region is the St. Lawrence Region.

Doris Lemon has provided several details in the past months to Loyalist Trails readers about the Western Corridor Alliance Region on which website you can see many details of what is happening there.

President Bob McBride has provided a link to a site which looks at the plans in a different dimension. The War of 1812 - Ontario Festivals Visited is a site which tackles the event challenge - what festivals and events are planned to help you plan your travel activities during the two years.

A note from Doris Lemon provided some details about one of many unsung combatants (today for sure we would call many of them heroes), Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell.

From Wikipedia: Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell of Greenfield (19 April 1785 – 14 October 1812) was an aide-de-camp to British Major General Sir Isaac Brock during the War of 1812, dying in the Battle of Queenston Heights. He was born on 19 April 1785 in Scotland near Aberchalder and came to Canada when he was seven years old. There he studied to become a lawyer and was called to the bar at the age of 23, opening his own law office. An interest in politics earned him a seat on the legislature and an appointment as attorney-general.

He also became a lieutenant colonel in the York Militia[1] and, at the outbreak of the War of 1812, became secretary and provincial aide-de-camp to General Isaac Brock. On 13 October 1812, during the Battle of Queenston Heights, Brock was struck and killed by an American musket ball. Despite being a lawyer by trade with little military experience, Lieutenant-Colonel Macdonell, along with Captain John Williams of the 49th Foot[2], led a second attempt to retake the Redan, one that was very-nearly successful.

It was during that second attempt that young Macdonell was killed. More details at Wikipedia.

Songwriter Stan Rogers wrote and sang a song, "Macdonnell on the Heights." You can read the lyrics of this song on this page of a song lyrics site, where the following comments (implicitly attributed to Stan Rogers) are recorded:

Another unsung hero of Canadian history...

The texts give a terribly sparse accounting of this man. He was a Major under Brock, and apparently not a very popular one. He was one of those "good young men" form the "right" kind of family, with the "right" kind of gentleman's education, a law practice and te ear of influential people of the day. There's nothing to indicate he was not a decent sort, but somebody writing up the accounts didn't want too much of the glory to be taken from the General! Perhaps this is one way of vindicating the historical vagaries of this nation. It gives me no small amount of satisfaction to think that more people will know that there's more than just Brock under that huge stone monument.

Better yet, the Stan Rogers recording has been married to a series of images (photos, paintings etc.) and placed on YouTube.

Book Recommendations for Summer Reading

Here are short descriptions of four new books that make for some great summer reading - I can recommend them as a set. Together, they make a convincing case for recasting some of our traditional ideas of the history of North America from 1776 to 1814. I think these have all come out now in anticipation of the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. They are all written by American authors.

1. Tories: Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War, by Thomas B. Allen, 2011

The title alone tells us that this book is rewriting history by changing the emphasis of the American Revolutionary War from Americans fighting British to Americans fighting fellow Americans - the basis for Loyalists. Taylor is a professor of American and Canadian history at the Univ. of California. He was born and raised in Maine. His end notes show that he did an incredible amount of research for this book in Archives Canada. It's an exceptional eye-opening book and a pretty good read.

2. The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies, by Alan Taylor, 2010

This book follows very nicely the narrative laid out by Allen in the first book. In spite of the heroics of Brock and a few other British military men, this book shows that the non-naval parts of the War of 1812 were fought by militias on both sides. The militias in Canada were, of course, made up of Loyalists or their sons - all Americans. A second civil war.

3. Don't Give Up The Ship: Myths of the War of 1812, by Donald R. Hickey, 2011

Hickey is an experienced American historian. In this book, he examines the stories from the war of 1812 for their validity. He punctures a lot of balloons by showing their falsehood and he provides evidence for the actual truth of the matter. Some observations are trivial, e.g., Laura Secord was actually the second person to tell the British that the Americans were planning an attack, not the first, but some are quite new, e.g., Canada won the war of 1812.

4. Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World, by Maya Jasanoff, 2011

This book is devoted totally to Loyalists. Yet there is hardly a mention of anything to do with Ontario. It illuminates the fates of the large numbers of Loyalists who settled in England, the Maritimes, the Caribbean and in Africa, For those of us who have done Loyalist research in Ontario, this book makes us expand our thinking and place "our" Loyalists into a much broader context.

Of these four books, Jasanoff's book is the most difficult to read. Her writing is a bit confusing and a bit disorganized. Sometimes it's difficult to tease out just exactly what she is trying to say. Her research and knowledge are excellent, though.

Since they are all new, they are all available through Amazon or at a good public library.

...Rod MacDonald, UE, Niagara Falls, Ont.

In the Spring 2011 issue of the Wilson Quarterly (vol. 35, no. 2), there are two book reviews by Nancy Isenberg, Professor of History at Louisiana State University. The Wilson Quarterly is published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. She reviews:

1. Tories: Fighting for the King's in America's first Civil War, by Thomas B. Allen, which she pans and finds quite badly researched. "Tories is a sad example of what can get passed off as history, and displays a minimal understanding of the British imperial world that the loyalists inhabited."

2. Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War, by Maya Jasanoff, who is an Historian at Harvard. The review praises the second book: "As a result, Jasanoff concludes, "these losers were winners in the end". Liberty's Exiles tells a complex and original story of the loyalists. It is a history worth knowing."

...Guylaine Petrin

The Tech Side: Your Very Own Genealogy Website – by Wayne Scott, UE

There can be many reasons for having your own family website. Possibly you have toiled for years and poured over volumes of records searching and finding links that take your family ancestry back many centuries. You should be rightfully proud of your research, and it deserves to be shared. Maybe you want to share some data with another family member who is collaborating in the hunt for the next ancestor. In addition, you may be wanting to put information out there to encourage other researchers to view your data and maybe find useful links.

There are many ways to get your information online. A number of companies offer free websites. Weebly is one example. From reading the website material, it is possible to use their tools to create your very own website and have it hosted. Although many "free" websites require the placement of advertising on your site, the folks at Weebly do not require this. A Google search will identify quite a few free website companies. While investigating these companies, read the fine print carefully. Sometimes 'free' isn't what you think.

There are a countless number of sites that will let you use their tools to create a website, then charge you a fee to host your website. The costs of doing this is decreasing all the time. One popular site, Godaddy.com, will set you up with a website, domain hosting, and email accounts for less than $10.00 a month. You often save even more by paying by the year. Another site to look at is BlueHost, where you can use their tools and host a site for about $6.00 a month. I have used this site and it is everything they advertise to be.

If you already have a Google account or even a gmail email account, you can take advantage of creating a personal website using Google. Check out the options. This is a template driven service which allows for some customization.

Another service that is both free and does not require advertising may already be on your computer. A while back I wrote about Drop Box, a file sharing tool. Drop Box has other tools which might suit your needs. When you open Drop Box, you will find a folder called "Public". This means that when a file is placed in this folder, it will be placed on the Public Access Server and anyone can view it. It has been suggested that you can make a sub directory of the public folder to look something like this: Dropbox\public\genealogy\scottfamily. Note that Mac users will have the slash marks going the opposite way. A sub directory can be created by a) double click on the Dropbox icon, b) open the Public folder, c) open the "Organize" tab, d) click on New Folder and give it an appropriate name. This becomes your second level sub directory. Opening the new folder and following the instructions above, new sub directories can be created.

Most of the modern genealogy programs will allow you to create a website, (Publish to the Web, Export to HTML, Create a Website or something similar). Make sure that the files created by your genealogy program are stored in the sub directory that you created for this reason. By using Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder, navigate to the Dropbox file where your new website is stored. The home page (first page of your website) will likely be listed as index.html. Right click on the filename then choose the "Copy Public Link" option. This is the url or address of your website. Anyone who pastes this url into their navigation bar of Windows Explorer or Mac Safari, will be taken to your new website. Store this information somewhere so that it can be sent by email to those people you want to see it. Remember, these websites are public, meaning they are available for anyone to see. Most genealogy programs recommend not posting information on living people, for security reasons.

It is up to you how long your Dropbox website stays public. After collaborating has been done, the files can be removed from your Dropbox Public folders. This project is not for the faint of heart, but can be a fun and rewarding experience.

You can email Wayne Scott to get in touch with questions or comments.

Additions to the Loyalist Directory

As time permits, we add information to the Loyalist Directory. The latest additions and updates are as follows:
- Bissell, David - from David Clark
- Bowen, Cornelius. - from Marguerite Hanratty
- Haines, Rebecca - from Phyllis Cosby (Volunteer Wendy Cosby) with certificate application
- Hooper, Major - from Lynne Charles with certificate application

Last Post: Muriel Gertrude Boggs

Muriel Gertrude Boggs, a long time member of Bicentennial Branch, died June 29, 2011 at the age of 94. Muriel was very proud of her UEL ancestry; she descended from John Wendel Wigle (proven) and Joseph Merritt. She is survived by her husband Hugh Boggs, daughter Sarah Buhler (Frank), 2 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. She will be greatly missed by her sister, Florine Merritt and brother, Mac Merritt.

...Margie Luffman UE, Past President, Bicentennial Branch