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Loyalist Trails UELAC Newsletter, 2020 Archive

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“Loyalist Trails” 2020-33: August 16, 2020

In this issue:
- 2020 Scholarship Challenge: It Was a Very Good Year!
- The Baileys and the Callahans: Friends in Difficult Days (Part 5), by Stephen Davidson
- Donation Tax Receipts
- When Did the American Revolution Begin?
- Book: On The Loyalist Trail: Loyalist History of Nova Scotia
- Book About General Peter Muhlenberg
- JAR: A Painter Abroad: John Singleton Copley Writes to His Wife
- Ben Franklin's World: The British Are Coming
- Pins, the Georgian Post-It Used by Jane Austen
- “Horrid Scenes of Villainy”: The Stamp Act Protest of August 1765
- Jamestown: “Many Wilde & Vast Projects” – Economic Alternatives In Tenuous Times
- Where in the World?
- Additions to the Loyalist Directory
- From the Twittersphere and Beyond

Articles

2020 Scholarship Challenge: It Was a Very Good Year!

The following multiple-choice quiz offers a quick peek into our reaction to the 2020 Scholarship Challenge. And believe me, 2020 has not provided many opportunities to pull out these snappy comebacks.

• (A) Couldn't be better;

• (B) As happy as a clam at high tide;

• (C) As pleased as punch;

• (D) Over the moon;

• (E) All of the above.

The answer is (E) All of the above!

What we have learned is that there is no limit to the generosity of UELAC members and friends. This week we added New Brunswick Branch. Thank you! And remember there is always room at the table for more.

18th century English writer Samuel Johnson observed, "The applause of a single human being is of great consequence." Today we send that applause to Assiniboine Branch, Colonel John Butler (Niagara) Branch, Governor Simcoe Branch, Grand River Branch, Kawartha Branch, New Brunswick Branch, and Vancouver Branch. Huzza!

Our final number for 2020 as of August 15 is 68 donors and a total of $23,748.00 raised for the UELAC Scholarship program. Amazing. On the 2020 Scholarship Challenge page you will find the many people who make UELAC scholarship possible. Spoiler alert – It's you. In addition to our Donor Appreciation List it is an honour this year to remember through memorial donations, these dear friends – Ronald Coleman, Rod Craig, Theodore Curylo, Bill Smy, Okill Stuart, Dennis Walker.

Donations, whether large or small, are welcome throughout the year. Again, thank you for your continued support of a very worthy initiative. Our mission to preserve, promote, and celebrate the history and traditions of the United Empire Loyalists is flourishing through scholarship.

...Bonnie Schepers, UE, Scholarship Chair

The Baileys and the Callahans: Friends in Difficult Days (Part 5)

© Stephen Davidson, UE

The Loyalists' hopes of a fresh start in Annapolis Royal began to sour by 1787. Jacob Bailey reported that "many people have removed from the several towns in this county upon their farms, so that Annapolis contains only forty-five families". It may have been this reversal of the region's fortunes that made Rebecca Callahan reconsider her earlier resolve to stay in Nova Scotia.

In the end, the nearness of the Baileys and the regard that she had earned from the "respectable inhabitants of Annapolis" was not enough to keep Rebecca in Nova Scotia, and she took her three children back to their old home along the Kennebec River. Thanks to the survival of one of her letters, we know that she had returned to Pownalborough by early October of 1789.

For the next quarter century, Rebecca Callahan's name appears nowhere in historical records or correspondence. It surfaces once again in October of 1814, when – after assenting to a confession of faith – Rebecca was admitted into the Congregational Church in Dresden (Pownalborough's new name as of 1794). The records note that she had been part of the Episcopal Church in Halifax – no doubt, St. Paul's Anglican Church. The story of how she came to leave the denomination of her friend and pastor Jacob Bailey has been lost entirely.

There is hardly any further information to be found regarding the Bailey family during Rebecca Callahan's 25 years of silence. Jacob and Sarah had four more children after Charles Percy (mid-1770s) and Rebecca Lavinia (1781). Charlotte Maria's birth was followed by that of Thomas Henry Bailey. Thomas became an officer in the Annapolis Royal militia and served as both barrack-master and store-keeper at Fort Anne, the local garrison. He died young, leaving a widow and three children.

William Gilbert Bailey married Maria DeLancey, a Loyalist's daughter, and enjoyed success as a lawyer. He also died young, leaving a family to mourn his death. Elizabeth Anna Bailey, born in 1791, married James Whitman.

Charles Percy, the oldest Bailey child had his intended name changed by Rebecca Callahan at his christening. Remembered as the little boy who did not recognize bread when his family arrived in Halifax, he grew to become a handsome man. His career as the local school teacher came to an end when he received a captain's commission the British Army. Unfortunately, Charles was killed at the Battle of Chippawa during the War of 1812. His sister Rebecca became a school teacher in Annapolis Royal and never married.

The Rev. Jacob Bailey would not know of the fate of his son Charles. The Loyalist minister died on July 26, 1808, six years before the Battle of Chippawa. Having only missed one Sunday service during the past quarter century, Bailey died of dropsy. Now known as edema or fluid retention, it typically swells the patient's arms and legs, making it hard to move the affected joints. One historian summed up his life, saying "Though oppressed himself by want and debt, his hospitality never ceased to flow, and by the kindness of his nature he always retained the personal regard of all who knew him."

Sarah Bailey died ten years after Jacob, passing away at 75 years of age on March 23, 1818. Rebecca Callahan, Sarah's friend through the difficult days of the American Revolution and Loyalist resettlement, died in Dresden, Maine in 1816.

Though incomplete, the story of the Baileys' and Callahans' friendship provides us with fascinating insights into the persecution that Loyalists endured, their difficulties in seeking sanctuary, and the challenges of settling far from home.

See a portrait of the Rev. Jacob Bailey.


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

Donation Tax Receipts

The tax receipts for all donations made up to the end of July have now been mailed.

...Jim Bruce, Dominion Office Administrator

When Did the American Revolution Begin?

By J.L.Bell 14 August 2020

Is this the anniversary of the day the American Revolution began?

That of course depends on accepting the idea that the American Revolution started on an identifiable day instead of building up gradually. Some revolutions are seen to start with a bang, like the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, and others aren't.

If there was one day when the political tensions between the imperial government in London and the North American colonies turned into (as yet unrecognized) revolution, I argue that day was 14 Aug 1765.

That's when Boston's Loyall Nine took American dissatisfaction with Parliament's new Stamp Act out from legislative chambers, courtrooms, and newspaper essays into the streets.

Read more.

Book: On The Loyalist Trail: Loyalist History of Nova Scotia

By Brian McConnell, UE. ISBN-13: 979-8673900437, Independently published, August 2020, 71 pages, paperback.

Where do you find evidence of the Loyalist History of Nova Scotia? After the American Revolution approximately 20,000 United Empire Loyalists, individuals who had remained loyal to the British cause, came as refugees to what is now Nova Scotia. Since the Spring of 2014 I have travelled the province of Nova Scotia exploring sites related to the settlement of United Empire Loyalists. I have taken thousands of photographs, prepared dozens of videos, and authored many historical articles using information learned from my visits. The purpose of this book is to share the information I have discovered on my historical explorations. This book includes descriptions and photographs of Buildings, Cairns, Cemeteries, Churches, Gravestones, Monuments, and Forts connected to the United Empire Loyalists.

Available at Amazon Canada (less expensive) and Amazon US.

Book About General Peter Muhlenberg

General Peter Muhlenberg: A Virginia Officer of the Continental Line, by Michael Cecere (Yardley, Pa: Westholme, 2020). Reviewed by Gabriel Neville.

"The General, mounted upon a white horse, tall and commanding in his figure, was very conspicuous at the head of his men...many of the [enemy] soldiers (German enlistments being for life,) remembered their former comrade, and the cry ran along their astonished ranks, 'Heir kommt teufel Piet!'"

This tale about Gen. Peter Muhlenberg at Brandywine appears in the 1849 biography written by his great nephew (and congressman) Henry Augustus Muhlenberg. "Here comes Devil Pete!" was shouted by members of a German dragoon company to which the writer says Muhlenberg had belonged as a young man. The story is nonsense, and just one example of why Michael Cecere's new biography of the general is desperately needed.

Peter Muhlenberg was a Pennsylvania-born German who was the son of the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America. He is best-known as the rector of a Shenandoah Valley (Anglican) parish and colonel of the 8th Virginia Regiment, which was raised on the frontier and initially intended to be a "German" regiment. The famous but poorly-documented farewell sermon he delivered in Woodstock, Virginia, in the spring of 1776 has been the subject of epic poetry and modern political debate. After a tour of the southern theater under Maj. Gen. Charles Lee, he was made a brigadier general. His brigade of Virginians was in Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene's division at Brandywine and Germantown. He was at Monmouth and remained in the army to the end of the war. He played an important role in the Virginia campaign leading up to Yorktown...

...General Muhlenberg will never compete with Henry Knox or Daniel Morgan for popularity among the Revolution's brigadiers. By other measures, however, he ranks among the very best in the army. The fact that he was a German cleric from Pennsylvania commanding a Virginia brigade seems merely interesting to us today. At the time, however, it broke boundaries that would have been shocking just a few years before the war. As a minister in the Church of England, he was arguably guilty of punishable treason the moment he accepted his first commission. Such an officer should be remembered, and remembered accurately. On both counts, Michael Cecere has made an important contribution to the literature of the Revolutionary War.

Read more.

JAR: A Painter Abroad: John Singleton Copley Writes to His Wife

by Justin Ross Muchnick 11 August 2020

It may have been Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's patriotic paean that belatedly canonized a heroic horseman as a key figure of the American Revolution, but it was John Singleton Copley who provided posterity with the definitive visual representation of the famous midnight rider. Seven years before Paul Revere spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm – and nearly a century before Longfellow made the deed immortal – Copley painted Revere's portrait. In Copley's picture, Revere, then known primarily as a successful silversmith and engraver, palms a shiny silver teapot in his meaty left hand. His engraving tools lie scattered on the polished wooden table, on which rests his right elbow, concealed by the billowing cascades of his white shirtsleeve. He gently presses his right thumb and forefinger against his chin – a pensive pose, perhaps one that Copley made him hold for hours on end. Revere's eyebrows are raised; he stares directly out at the viewer.

Copley's prodigious painterly talent is on full display here, in a portrait renowned both for its artistic merit and for the eventual celebrity of the sitter...Copley desired more than Boston could offer. In 1774, just six years after he completed the revered Revere portrait, he set off for London, hoping to ply his trade in a more sophisticated art market before making his way to the Continent on his own Grand Tour.

Copley's stay in Europe ended up becoming a permanent one – he died in London in 1815, never returning to America after his departure – but in 1774 he did not know that his transatlantic trip would turn into anything more than a temporary sojourn...

In the end, Copley wound up losing out on the commission before departing for his tour of Continental Europe, but the very fact that he was in contention to win it adds a bit of a wrinkle to that famous picture of Paul Revere. A year before the midnight ride and the shot heard 'round the world, the man who had so brilliantly executed the iconic image of the eventual midnight rider was in London, speaking with Thomas Hutchinson about the prospect of painting the monarchs of an empire that would soon be at war with the silversmith in shirtsleeves and his countrymen.

Read more.

Ben Franklin's World: The British Are Coming

Rick Atkinson, a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a journalist who has worked as a reporter, foreign correspondent, and senior editor at The Washington Post, and the author of The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, joins us to explore how the War for Independence has impacted and shaped the American character.

During our exploration, Rick reveals why it's important for us to view the American Revolution through both British and American perspectives; The scarcity the American and British armies experienced during the war; And, the violence and devastation wrought by the War for Independence and what that violence and devastation can tell us about the American character.

Listen to the podcast.

Pins, the Georgian Post-It Used by Jane Austen

By Susan Holloway Scott 12 August 2020

Pins were a necessity to everyday 18th c. life. Straight pins were widely used to fasten all kinds of clothing, from women's bodices to infant's diapers, and also used in hand sewing. Pins were considered so indispensable that when Abigail Adams wrote from colonial Massachusetts to her husband John Adams in London in 1775, the one thing she requested was for him to "purchase me a bundle of pins and put in your trunk for me."

But I hadn't realized that pins were also an essential tool for 18th c. writers. Thanks to (or cursed by, depending on your point of view) computers, most modern writers submit manuscripts electronically....

But what did writers do in the days before paper clips and Post-Its? How did an early novelist, editor, or typesetter who was already struggling to make sense of a handwritten manuscript mark revisions and additions?

Read more.

“Horrid Scenes of Villainy”: The Stamp Act Protest of August 1765

By Nina Rodwin 15 June 2020, interpreter at Paul Revere House

August 14, 1765, most likely began as a typical day for Paul Revere. As he went about the day's work at his silversmith shop on Clark's Wharf, Revere was probably unaware that a crowd had hung an effigy of Andrew Oliver, Boston's official Stamp Act collector, in the early hours of the morning. Maybe Revere overheard his customers discussing the incident during the day, as the news quickly spread throughout town. By nightfall, a large crowd took the effigy down from what would become known as The Liberty Tree and then paraded through the town. The crowd soon arrived at Oliver's home and burned the effigy, minutes after his family made a narrow escape. Oliver soon after officially resigned his post. However, the fury towards the proposed Stamp Act was not quelled.

Just twelve days later, on August 26th, an enormous crowd surrounded the three-story mansion of Lieutenant Governor and Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson. In only a few hours, the house was completely destroyed, expensive furnishings, textiles, wine, and silver were stolen, and even Hutchinson's garden was razed to the ground. Over the next days and weeks, the people of Boston debated what this violent protest would mean for their movement. Could a large protesting group create real and desired changes? Or would an unruly mob threaten the very cause they fought for? As recent protests against racism, police brutality, and economic regulations have shown, the question of how to protest still remains to this day. While there are no easy answers to this question, we can make connections to how Bostonians reacted to the Stamp Act crisis and the contemporary reactions to violence and looting during our ongoing protests.

Read more.

Jamestown: “Many Wilde & Vast Projects” – Economic Alternatives In Tenuous Times

7 August 2020

Shall we all go plant tobacco? As the coronavirus pandemic still spreads in our country, economists, politicians, and business owners continue to seek ways to stimulate our devastated economy. The Virginia Company faced economic difficulties 400 years ago and moved to diversify the products coming from Virginia to stimulate and assist England's economy. They sought alternative options to tobacco cultivation, an idea encouraged by King James I who hated the terribly unhealthy "stinking weed." Ultimately, however, after trying a number of alternatives, the "golden weed" would triumph.

In 1618 a change in leadership in the Virginia Company placed Sir Edwin Sandys at the helm. Sandys hoped to halt Virginians' "excessive planting of tobacco" and England's reliance solely upon the plant for profits. He wanted to stimulate colonization by granting private land ownership and introducing "divers staple commodities" for which there was a steady market in England, but for which England paid dearly to import – masts, boards, pitch, tar, potashes, hemp and flax from Scandinavia, Poland and Germany; wine and salt from France and Spain; iron from Spain and Sweden; silk from Italy and Persia; furs and cordage from Russia. If England's own colony could produce these it could reduce Englanders' reliance on foreign imports. In July 1619 when the first General Assembly met in Jamestown, Company leaders pushed through a series of laws to jump-start the manufacture of some of these products.

Read more.

Where in the World?

Where are Grietje McBride, UE, Robert McBride, UE, and Maxwell Richardson, UE, of Kawartha Branch?

To participate, submit a photo of yourself in UELAC promotional gear at a place of some note and tell us where it is (if you are a member of a branch, please indicate that as well). Send your submission to the editor at loyalist.trails@uelac.org.

Additions to the Loyalist Directory

As time permits, we add information to the Loyalist Directory. The latest additions and updates are as follows:

  • Gideon Corey - contributed by Shirley Thorne
  • Samuel Covey - contributed by Pam Wood Waugh
  • Capt. Michael Grass - from information provided by Bradley Grass
  • Isaac Lamb Sr. - contributed from Branch records by Jo Ann Tuskin
  • Pvt. John (Johannes) Marcelis - contributed by Carolyn Brown

Please help us build the directory by contributing information. Contact loyalist.trails@uelac.org for guidance.

From the Twittersphere and Beyond