THE EXODUS TO NOVA SCOTIA
When the terms of peace became known, tens of thousands of the Loyalists
shook the dust of their ungrateful country from their feet, never to
return. Of these the more influential part, both during and after the
war, sailed for England. The royal officials, the wealthy merchants,
landowners, and professional men, the high military officers—these went
to England to press their claims for compensation and preferment. The
humbler element, for the most part, migrated to the remaining British
colonies in North America. About two hundred families went to the West
Indies, a few to Newfoundland, many to what were afterwards called Upper
and Lower Canada, and a vast army to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and
Prince Edward Island.
The advantages of Nova Scotia as a field for immigration had been known
to the people of New England and New York before the Revolutionary War
had broken out. Shortly after the Peace of 1763 parts of the Nova Scotian
peninsula and the banks of the river St John had been sparsely settled by
colonists from the south; and during the Revolutionary War considerable
sympathy with the cause of the Continental Congress was shown by these
colonists from New England. Nova Scotia, moreover, was contiguous to the
New England colonies, and it was therefore not surprising that after the
Revolution the Loyalists should have turned their eyes to Nova Scotia as
a refuge for their families.
The first considerable migration took place at the time of the evacuation
of Boston by General Howe in March 1776. Boston was at that time a town
with a population of about sixteen thousand inhabitants, and of these
nearly one thousand accompanied the British Army to Halifax. ‘Neither
Hell, Hull, nor Halifax,’ said one of them, ‘can afford worse shelter
than Boston.’ The embarkation was accomplished amid the most hopeless
confusion. ‘Nothing can be more diverting,’ wrote a Whig, ‘than to see
the town in its present situation; all is uproar and confusion; carts,
trucks, wheelbarrows, handbarrows, coaches, chaises, all driving as if
the very devil was after them.’ The fleet was composed of every vessel
on which hands could be laid. In Benjamin Hallowell’s cabin ‘there were
thirty-seven persons—men, women, and children; servants, masters, and
mistresses—obliged to pig together on the floor, there being no berths.’
It was a miracle that the crazy flotilla arrived safely at Halifax; but
there it arrived after tossing about for six days in the March tempests.
General Howe remained with his army at Halifax until June. Then he set
sail for New York. Some of the Loyalists accompanied him to New York, but
the greater number took passage for England. Only a few of the company
remained in Nova Scotia.
From 1776 to 1783 small bodies of Loyalists continually found their
way to Halifax; but it was not until the evacuation of New York by the
British in 1783 that the full tide of immigration set in. As soon as news
leaked out that the terms of peace were not likely to be favourable,
and it became evident that the animus of the Whigs showed no signs of
abating, the Loyalists gathered in New York looked about for a country in
which to begin life anew. Most of them were too poor to think of going to
England, and the British provinces to the north seemed the most hopeful
place of resort. In 1782 several associations were formed in New York
for the purpose of furthering the interests of those who proposed to
settle in Nova Scotia. One of these associations had as its president
the famous Dr Seabury, and as its secretary Sampson Salter Blowers,
afterwards chief justice of Nova Scotia. Its officers waited on Sir Guy
Carleton, and received his approval of their plans. It was arranged
that a first instalment of about five hundred colonists should set out
in the autumn of 1782, in charge of three agents, Amos Botsford, Samuel
Cummings, and Frederick Hauser, whose duty it should be to spy out the
land and obtain grants.
The party sailed from New York, in nine transport ships, on October 19,
1782, and arrived a few days later at Annapolis Royal. The population
of Annapolis, which was only a little over a hundred, was soon swamped
by the numbers that poured out of the transports. ‘All the houses and
barracks are crowded,’ wrote the Rev. Jacob Bailey, who was then at
Annapolis, ‘and many are unable to procure any lodgings.’ The three
agents, leaving the colonists at Annapolis, went first to Halifax, and
then set out on a trip of exploration through the Annapolis valley, after
which they crossed the Bay of Fundy and explored the country adjacent to
the river St John. On their return they published glowing accounts of the
country, and their report was transmitted to their friends in New York.
The result of the favourable reports sent in by these agents, and by
others who had gone ahead, was an invasion of Nova Scotia such as no
one, not even the provincial authorities, had begun to expect. As the
names of the thousands who were anxious to go to Nova Scotia poured into
the adjutant-general’s office in New York, it became clear to Sir Guy
Carleton that with the shipping facilities at his disposal he could not
attempt to transport them all at once. It was decided that the ships
would have to make two trips; and, as a matter of fact, most of them made
three or four trips before the last British soldier was able to leave the
New York shore.
On April 26, 1783, the first or ‘spring’ fleet set sail. It had on board
no less than seven thousand persons, men, women, children, and servants.
Half of these went to the mouth of the river St John, and about half to
Port Roseway, at the south-west end of the Nova Scotian peninsula. The
voyage was fair, and the ships arrived at their destinations without
mishap. But at St John at least, the colonists found that almost no
preparations had been made to receive them. They were disembarked on
a wild and primeval shore, where they had to clear away the brushwood
before they could pitch their tents or build their shanties. The prospect
must have been disheartening. ‘Nothing but wilderness before our eyes,
the women and children did not refrain from tears,’ wrote one of the
exiles; and the grandmother of Sir Leonard Tilley used to tell her
descendants, ‘I climbed to the top of Chipman’s Hill and watched the
sails disappearing in the distance, and such a feeling of loneliness came
over me that, although I had not shed a tear through all the war, I sat
down on the damp moss with my baby in my lap and cried.’
All summer and autumn the ships kept plying to and fro. In June the
‘summer fleet’ brought about 2500 colonists to St John River, Annapolis,
Port Roseway, and Fort Cumberland. By August 23 John Parr, the governor
of Nova Scotia, wrote that ‘upward of 12,000 souls have already arrived
from New York,’ and that as many more were expected. By the end of
September he estimated that 18,000 had arrived, and stated that 10,000
more were still to come. By the end of the year he computed the total
immigration to have amounted to 30,000. As late as January 15, 1784,
the refugees were still arriving. On that date Governor Parr wrote to
Lord North announcing the arrival of ‘a considerable number of Refugee
families, who must be provided for in and about the town at extraordinary
expence, as at this season of the year I cannot send them into the
country.’ ‘I cannot,’ he added, ‘better describe the wretched condition
of these people than by inclosing your lordship a list of those just
arrived in the Clinton transport, destitute of almost everything, chiefly
women and children, all still on board, as I have not yet been able to
find any sort of place for them, and the cold setting in severe.’ There
is a tradition in Halifax that the cabooses had to be taken off the
ships, and ranged along the principal street, in order to shelter these
unfortunates during the winter.
New York was evacuated by the British troops on November 25, 1783. Sir
Guy Carleton did not withdraw from the city until he was satisfied that
every person who desired the protection of the British flag was embarked
on the boats. During the latter half of the year Carleton was repeatedly
requested by Congress to fix some precise limit to his occupation of New
York. He replied briefly, but courteously, that he was doing the best he
could, and that no man could do more. When Congress objected that the
Loyalists were not included in the agreement with regard to evacuation,
Carleton replied that he held opposite views; and that in any case it was
a point of honour with him that no troops should embark until the last
person who claimed his protection should be safely on board a British
ship. As time went on, his replies to Congress grew shorter and more
incisive. On being requested to name an outside date for the evacuation
of the city, he declared that he could not even guess when the last ship
would be loaded, but that he was resolved to remain until it was. He
pointed out, moreover, that the more the uncontrolled violence of their
citizens drove refugees to his protection, the longer would evacuation
be delayed. ‘I should show,’ he said, ‘an indifference to the feelings
of humanity, as well as to the honour and interest of the nation whom
I serve, to leave any of the Loyalists that are desirous to quit the
country, a prey to the violence they conceive they have so much cause to
apprehend.’
After the evacuation of New York, therefore, the number of refugee
Loyalists who came to Nova Scotia was small and insignificant. In 1784
and 1785 there arrived a few persons who had tried to take up the thread
of their former life in the colonies, but had given up the attempt. And
in August 1784 the _Sally_ transport from London cast anchor at Halifax
with three hundred destitute refugees on board. ‘As if there was not a
sufficiency of such distress’d objects already in this country,’ wrote
Edward Winslow from Halifax, ‘the good people of England have collected
a whole ship load of all kinds of vagrants from the streets of London,
and sent them out to Nova Scotia. Great numbers died on the passage
of various disorders—the miserable remnant are landed here and have
now no covering but tents. Such as are able to crawl are begging for a
proportion of provisions at my door.’
But the increase of population in Nova Scotia from immigration during
the years immediately following 1783 was partly counterbalanced by the
defections from the province. Many of the refugees quailed before the
prospect of carving out a home in the wilderness. ‘It is, I think, the
roughest land I ever saw’; ‘I am totally discouraged’; ‘I am sick of
this Province’—such expressions as these abound in the journals and
diaries of the settlers. There were complaints that deception had been
practised. ‘All our golden promises,’ wrote a Long Island Loyalist, ‘are
vanished in smoke. We were taught to believe this place was not barren
and foggy as had been represented, but we find it ten times worse. We
have nothing but his Majesty’s rotten pork and unbaked flour to subsist
on.... It is the most inhospitable clime that ever mortal set foot on.’
At first there was great distress among the refugees. The immigration of
1783 had at one stroke trebled the population of Nova Scotia; and the
resources of the province were inadequate to meet the demand on them.
‘Nova Scarcity’ was the nickname for the province invented by a New
England wit. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that some who
had set their hand to the plough turned back. Some of them went to Upper
Canada; some to England; some to the states from which they had come;
for within a few years the fury of the anti-Loyalist feeling died down,
and not a few Loyalists took advantage of this to return to the place of
their birth.
The most careful analysis of the Loyalist immigration into the Maritime
Provinces has placed the total number of immigrants at about 35,000.
These were in settlements scattered broadcast over the face of the map.
There was a colony of 3000 in Cape Breton, which afforded an ideal field
for settlement, since before 1783 the governor of Nova Scotia had been
precluded from granting lands there. In 1784 Cape Breton was erected
into a separate government, with a lieutenant-governor of its own; and
settlers flocked into it from Halifax, and even from Canada. Abraham
Cuyler, formerly mayor of Albany, led a considerable number down the
St Lawrence and through the Gulf to Cape Breton. On the mainland of
Nova Scotia there were settlements at Halifax, at Shelburne, at Fort
Cumberland, at Annapolis and Digby, at Port Mouton, and at other places.
In what is now New Brunswick there was a settlement at Passamaquoddy Bay,
and there were other settlements on the St John river extending from
the mouth up past what is now the city of Fredericton. In Prince Edward
Island, then called the Island of St John, there was a settlement which
is variously estimated in size, but which was comparatively unimportant.
The most interesting of these settlements was that at Shelburne, which is
situated at the south-west corner of Nova Scotia, on one of the finest
harbours of the Atlantic seaboard. The name of the harbour was originally
Port Razoir, but this was corrupted by the English settlers into Port
Roseway. The place had been settled previous to 1783. In 1775 Colonel
Alexander McNutt, a notable figure of the pre-Loyalist days in Nova
Scotia, had obtained a grant of 100,000 acres about the harbour, and had
induced about a dozen Scottish and Irish families to settle there. This
settlement he had dignified with the name of New Jerusalem. In a short
time, however, New Jerusalem languished and died, and when the Loyalists
arrived in May 1783, the only inhabitants of the place were two or three
fishermen and their families. It would have been well if the Loyalists
had listened to the testimony of one of these men, who, when he was asked
how he came to be there, replied that ‘poverty had brought him there, and
poverty had kept him there.’
The project of settling the shores of Port Roseway had its birth in the
autumn of 1782, when one hundred and twenty Loyalist families, whose
attention had been directed to that part of Nova Scotia by a friend in
Massachusetts, banded together with the object of emigrating thither.
They first appointed a committee of seven to make arrangements for their
removal; and, a few weeks later, they commissioned two members of the
association, Joseph Pynchon and James Dole, to go to Halifax and lay
before Governor Parr their desires and intentions. Pynchon and Dole,
on their arrival at Halifax, had an interview with the governor, and
obtained from him very satisfactory arrangements. The governor agreed
to give the settlers the land about Port Roseway which they desired. He
promised them that surveyors should be sent to lay out the grants, that
carpenters and a supply of 400,000 feet of lumber should be furnished
for building their houses, that for the first year at least the settlers
should receive army rations, and that they should be free for ever from
impressment in the British Navy. All these promises were made on the
distinct understanding that they should interfere in no way with the
claims of the Loyalists on the British government for compensation for
losses sustained in the war. Elated by the reception they had received
from the governor, the agents wrote home enthusiastic accounts of the
prospects of the venture. Pynchon even hinted that the new town would
supersede Halifax. ‘Much talk is here,’ he wrote, ‘of capital of
Province.... Halifax can’t but be sensible that Port Roseway, if properly
attended to in encouraging settlers of every denomination, will have much
the advantage of all supplies from the Bay of Fundy and westward. What
the consequence will be time only will reveal.’ Many persons at Halifax,
wrote Pynchon, prophesied that the new settlement would dwindle, and
recommended the shore of the Bay of Fundy or the banks of the river St
John in preference to Port Roseway; but Pynchon attributed their fears
to jealousy. A few years’ experience must have convinced him that his
suspicions were ill-founded.
The first instalment of settlers, about four thousand in number, arrived
in May 1783. They found nothing but the virgin wilderness confronting
them. But they set to work with a will to clear the land and build
their houses. ‘As soon as we had set up a kind of tent,’ wrote the Rev.
Jonathan Beecher in his Journal, ‘we knelt down, my wife and I and my
two boys, and kissed the dear ground and thanked God that the flag of
England floated there, and resolved that we would work with the rest
to become again prosperous and happy.’ By July 11 the work of clearing
had been so far advanced that it became possible to allot the lands.
The town had been laid out in five long parallel streets, with other
streets crossing them at right angles. Each associate was given a town
lot fronting on one of these streets, as well as a water lot facing the
harbour, and a fifty-acre farm in the surrounding country. With the aid
of the government artisans, the wooden houses were rapidly run up; and in
a couple of months a town sprang up where before had been the forest and
some fishermen’s huts.
At the end of July Governor Parr paid the town a visit, and christened
it, curiously enough, with the name of Shelburne, after the British
statesman who was responsible for the Peace of Versailles. The occasion
was one of great ceremony. His Excellency, as he landed from the sloop
_Sophie_, was saluted by the booming of cannon from the ships and from
the shore. He proceeded up the main street, through a lane of armed men.
At the place appointed for his reception he was met by the magistrates
and principal citizens, and presented with an address. In the evening
there was a dinner given by Captain Mowat on board the _Sophie_; and the
next evening there was another dinner at the house of Justice Robertson,
followed by a ball given by the citizens, which was ‘conducted with the
greatest festivity and decorum,’ and ‘did not break up till five the
next morning.’ Parr was delighted with Shelburne, and wrote to Sir Guy
Carleton, ‘From every appearance I have not a doubt but that it will in a
short time become the most flourishing Town for trade of any in this part
of the world, and the country will for agriculture.’
For a few years it looked as though Shelburne was not going to belie
these hopes. The autumn of 1783 brought a considerable increase to its
population; and in 1784 it seems to have numbered no less than ten
thousand souls, including the suburb of Burchtown, in which most of
the negro refugees in New York had been settled. It became a place of
business and fashion. There was for a time an extensive trade in fish
and lumber with Great Britain and the West Indies. Shipyards were built,
from which was launched the first ship built in Nova Scotia after the
British occupation. Shops, taverns, churches, coffee-houses, sprang up.
At one time no less than three newspapers were published in the town. The
military were stationed there, and on summer evenings the military band
played on the promenade near the bridge. On election day the main street
was so crowded that ‘one might have walked on the heads of the people.’
Then Shelburne fell into decay. It appeared that the region was
ill-suited for farming and grazing, and was not capable of supporting
so large a population. The whale fishery which the Shelburne merchants
had established in Brazilian waters proved a failure. The regulations
of the Navigation Acts thwarted their attempts to set up a coasting
trade. Failure dogged all their enterprises, and soon the glory of
Shelburne departed. It became like a city of the dead. ‘The houses,’
wrote Haliburton, ‘were still standing though untenanted. It had all the
stillness and quiet of a moonlight scene. It was difficult to imagine
it was deserted. The idea of repose more readily suggested itself than
decay. All was new and recent. Seclusion, and not death or removal,
appeared to be the cause of the absence of inhabitants.’ The same
eye-witness of Shelburne’s ruin described the town later:
The houses, which had been originally built of wood, had
severally disappeared. Some had been taken to pieces and
removed to Halifax or St John; others had been converted
into fuel, and the rest had fallen a prey to neglect and
decomposition. The chimneys stood up erect, and marked the
spot around which the social circle had assembled; and the
blackened fireplaces, ranged one above another, bespoke the
size of the tenement and the means of its owner. In some places
they had sunk with the edifice, leaving a heap of ruins, while
not a few were inclining to their fall, and awaiting the first
storm to repose again in the dust that now covered those who
had constructed them. Hundreds of cellars with their stone
walls and granite partitions were everywhere to be seen like
uncovered monuments of the dead. Time and decay had done their
work. All that was perishable had perished, and those numerous
vaults spoke of a generation that had passed away for ever, and
without the aid of an inscription, told a tale of sorrow and of
sadness that overpowered the heart.
Alas for the dreams of the Pynchons and the Parrs! Shelburne is now a
quaint and picturesque town; but it is not the city which its projectors
planned.