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 2,500 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 3,000 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. Ship-yards 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.