SHELBURNE AND THE LOYALISTS
There are, apart from the capital, five famous historical
shrines in New Scotland—Annapolis Royal, Louisbourg,
Grand Pré, Fort Lawrence, and Shelburne. How many
English readers know anything of Shelburne? How many
have ever so much as heard the name? And yet, once, a
century and a quarter ago, the uprising of this town, in a
single night as it were, the sufferings of the 12,000 American
Loyalist refugees who had landed there to found it,
evoked a widespread interest. The tale of the Loyalists of
Shelburne rang through the hall at Westminster, and in the
Colonial Assemblies. It was told in the closet of the King,
and was set forth in the newspapers; and what a story it
was! English history scarce can show its parallel. It is
the tale of the exiled Huguenots, but the impelling motive
was not loyalty to a form of faith, but to an earthly
sovereign and a flag. How much fanaticism, how much
bigotry, is interwoven with religious sacrifice! We may
respect, but we cannot love the cold and narrow minds
who, whether called Protestant, or Catholic, or Puritan, fled
from their country because of the doctrine they disliked or
an article they distrusted, who were ready to put seas of
salt water between them and a rubric, or to risk seas of
human blood to escape the sight of a chasuble or the
necessity for a genuflexion.
But personal loyalty one understands—the love for
one’s flag and one’s own people strikes a responsive chord
in warm bosoms. The Puritans, I fear, who founded New
England, were but indifferent patriots. The cry of “St.
George and Merry England!” would amongst them have
proved a feeble tocsin.
The Loyalists were, as I have said, the best class in
America, comprising the most notable judges, the most
eminent lawyers, most cultured clergy, most distinguished
physicians, most educated and refined of the people north
and south. Long before the war broke out, the Boston
mobs had persecuted them for their political professions.
Any official or merchant sympathising with the British
Army or British Government of the day was a target for
their insolence. They set Governor Hutchinson’s mansion
in flames; sheriffs and judges were mobbed, feeble old
men were driven into the woods, and innocent women insulted.
With the progress of the war, the violence of the
revolutionists increased in intensity. Thousands sought
safety with the King’s troops; many others armed themselves
and fought valiantly for the King and the British
connection. To be suspected of being a Loyalist was to
have one’s estate confiscated, and even to be punished
with death.
But what the Loyalists suffered during the war, when
the issue of the contest was doubtful, was nothing to what
they had to endure after 1783.
The British Empire had been badly served by the officers
England had sent out to America. If Wolfe had lived to
direct her armies, the end might have been different; but
mismanagement reigned, and such Generals as Gage, Burgoyne, and
Cornwallis, planned feebly and fought half-heartedly. If there was
any doubt as to the result, that doubt was speedily set at rest
when England’s hereditary enemy, France, espoused the cause of the
American insurgents. French money, ships, and men poured into America.
The Americans fought with French muskets, they were clad in French
clothing, and they were paid with gold which the impoverished people of
France could ill spare. Great is the debt America owes to the French
King and statesmen of that time.[13]
[Footnote 13: _The Romance of Canada_, by Beckles Willson, 1907.]
With the conclusion of the war, the men who had stood
staunch and faithful to the United Empire were destined to
undergo a further ordeal. As “traitors” they were pursued
through the streets; their families were driven into the
woods; they were shot down remorselessly. Rows of them
were hung up like felons. At the battle of King’s
Mountain, in North Carolina, ten of the prisoners, men
of character and influence, were hanged in cold blood.
There were many instances of ferocious executions upon
prisoners.
Under the Treaty of 1783 they had been abandoned by
the Mother Country to the tender mercies of the American
conquerors.
“When I consider the case of the Loyalists,” said
Wilberforce in Parliament, “I confess I there feel myself
conquered; I there see my country humiliated; I there
see her at the feet of America!” “A peace founded
on the sacrifice of these unhappy subjects,” declared
another, “must be accursed in the sight of God and
man.”[14]
[Footnote 14: “I trust you will agree with me that a due and generous
attention ought to be shown to those who have relinquished their
property or their possessions from motives of loyalty to me, or
attachment to the Mother Country.”—_King’s Speech_, 1783.]
Nova Scotia proper, during the war, had not been
molested, and to it the Loyalists now turned in large
numbers as a refuge under the flag. Acadia was to be the
Canaan of the Loyalists.
Somewhere—for most of them knew it but vaguely—in
that northern land, in the virgin forests of pine, and
maple, and hemlock, in the solitudes of seashore, lake, and
river, which no man of English blood had yet seen, was the
refuge the Loyalists sought.
In November 1783, New York was evacuated by the
King’s troops under Sir Guy Carlton. He carried with
him all the stores belonging to the Crown, all baggage and
artillery, and he was accompanied by 40,000 men, women,
and children. New York was the stronghold of the
Loyalists; Pennsylvania had been equally divided between
Loyalists and Revolutionists; there were more Loyalists in
Virginia than adherents of Congress; and Georgia had at
least three Loyalists for every rebel. Thousands had
perished; thousands had sought refuge in England; thousands
had recanted. Fifty thousand now set out with their
wives and children and such belongings as were left to
them to traverse the hundreds of miles which lay between
them and their new homesteads in Canada. These United
Empire Loyalists were the fathers of English Canada.
There are few tales which history has to tell so stirring
and so noble as the exodus of the Loyalists. Most of them
had been brought up in comfort and even luxury; their
women were tenderly nurtured and unaccustomed to hardship.
But one spirit animated them all; one hope fired all
their bosoms; one faith drove them out of the American
Republic into the wilderness.
The exiles were divided into two main streams, one
moving eastward to Nova Scotia and the country where, a
century and a half before, Poutrincourt and La Tour had
fought and flourished. The other moved westward to the
region north of Lake Ontario. Those who followed the
eastern course landed at the mouth of the St. John River,
New Brunswick, on the 18th May 1783, a day still
celebrated in the city of St. John’s. They took up settlements
in the meadows of the Bay of Fundy, and at Port
Rasoir in Nova Scotia. There, like the city in the Arabian
tale, there sprang up, as if by magic, the town of Shelburne,
with 12,000 inhabitants, where yesterday had been
but solitude.
“No one will know because none has told all that these
brave pioneers underwent for their devotion and fidelity.
You will see to-day on the outskirts of the older settlements
little mounds, moss-covered tombstones which record
the last resting places of the forefathers of the hamlet.
They do not tell you of the brave hearts laid low by hunger
and exposure, of the girlish forms wasted away, of the babes
and little children who perished for want of proper food and
raiment. They have nothing to tell of the courageous
high-minded mothers, wives, and daughters, who bore
themselves as bravely as men, complaining never, toiling
with the men in the fields, banishing all regrets for the life
they might have led had they sacrificed their loyalty....
No great monument is raised to their memory; none is
needed; it is enshrined for ever in the hearts of every
Canadian and of every one who admires fidelity to principle,
devotion, and self-sacrifice.”[15]
[Footnote 15: _Romance of Canada_, p. 260.]
In the spring of 1783 a fleet of eighteen large ships
and several small vessels, convoyed by two warships, brought
471 Loyalist families from New York to a fine harbour
called Port Roseway (Rasoir), where the redoubtable Colonel
M’Nutt had a few years before intended to build the city
of New Jerusalem. There, too,
The breaking wave dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast;
but the shiploads of Americans, whose cause of King and
United Empire had been lost, hoped they were destined to
a propitious spot where they could begin their fortunes
anew. When these Loyalists, who called themselves
“True Blues,” landed, what a picture was then presented!
“As soon as we had set up a kind of tent we knelt
down, my wife and I and our 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 happy and prosperous.”
And the spirit which animated the bosom of worthy
Jonathan Beecher and his flock dwelt with nearly all of
those five thousand foregathered on the sloping shore of
this beautiful harbour. Lanterns and torches flamed that
night; laughter and tears intermingled. Hundreds of
forms moved about restlessly. There was singing of
hymns, trolling of glees, and toasting of His Majesty
and Governor Parr. Trunks, and packing-cases, and valises
were opened. A table was brought from the ship, and
round it sat a number of ladies in silk dresses and
powdered hair. A few desired a dance as an outlet for
their tumultuous thoughts; and so there in the moonlight
the young, the hopeful, the light-hearted, that all their
recent sufferings could not wholly dismay, danced a
quadrille—danced it out of sheer high spirits, and only
separated at dawn.
And the woods behind a group of swarthy Micmacs
and their squaws came to overpeer and wonder at the
spectacle—thinking a host of mad folk had been blown
across the Big Drink. Mad indeed they were—mad for
joy—mad in their hopes and schemes—mad in their utter
improvidence.
Other immigrants followed, and within a short time
16,000 inhabitants were here. A fort was built, troops
were stationed, and warships continually paraded the
harbour; and much work was done, particularly wharf
and road building. In 1788 the exports comprised
13,151 quintals dry cod, 4193 casks of pickled fish,
61 casks of smoked salmon, 149 barrels fish oil, and
14,793 gallons sperm oil, During the year Prince
William Henry (afterwards William IV.) visited the
town, a ball being given in his honour. Yet even then
Shelburne was existing on an artificial basis. For the
first three years 9000 of the “True Blues” (or Blue
Noses) drew rations from the British Government, and
demoralisation set in. Then came a great storm in 1798
which wiped out wharves and shipping; other calamities
followed, and by 1818 the population had dwindled to
300 souls.
[Illustration: THE OLD GOVERNOR’S HOUSE, SHELBURNE.]
As I walked through the ghost of that old Shelburne,
all the scenes and events of the next few weeks, months
and years, as I had once read of them in Colonial records
and in old journals and letters, came back to me, and
I could in my mind’s eye reconstruct it all. This wide
street, overgrown now with grass, running up from the
harbour, was King Street; this other was Queen Street;
this other Princes Street. For months carpenters and
masons were busy hewing timber, hammering and hoisting,
digging and mortaring. Rows after rows of houses
appeared, and in a short time Shelburne, but yesterday
a wilderness, presented all the appearance of a flourishing
town. Some of the houses are still standing. There is
the Governor’s house, a stately edifice enough, of that old
Colonial pattern that the modern builder seems to have lost
the recipe for making. It stands not far from the water’s
edge, and is reached by a flight of steep steps. Its face is
half hid by Virginia creeper. An old, old man came to
the door and bade me enter. His name is Frith, and he is
a carpenter by trade. He has long lived in the old house,
and his father could remember the landing of the Loyalists.
The house is panelled throughout, and there are fine and
spacious fireplaces and chimney-pieces. Here was the social
centre of Shelburne in its prime.
The fine dwellings dropped to pieces, or were burnt,
cattle and sheep might graze in the streets, the fort was
dismantled. A few clung, however, to Shelburne, and
their descendants are to-day witnessing the revival of the
town’s fortunes.
Lockeport is charmingly situated on an island, connected
with the mainland at its nearest point by a substantial iron
bridge. To the left of the island the bay runs inland for
several miles; to the right a low shielding promontory
juts out to sea. The harbour is safe and free from squalls,
affording splendid opportunities for yachting. The bathing
beach, a glistening crescent of hard, white sand, extends
for a mile or more. It is the general playground and
fashionable promenade of the town.
Good salmon and trout streams are easily accessible.
The Jordan River, back on the road to Shelburne, is
especially famous for hard fighting salmon and gamy
trout. Feathered game are in abundance. The extensive
moose country of the Sable River district is within easy
reach, and moose are plentiful enough for those who
know the way of the woods. For black duck and wild
geese the vicinities of Port Jolie, Port L’Herbert, and
Jones Harbour enjoy great local repute.
The district about Lockeport was for a long time
known as Ragged Islands. Just a century and a half ago
Dr. Jonathan Locke, of Chilmark, Mass., and Josiah
Churchill came here, selecting with great discrimination
the spot best situated with regard to the fishing grounds.
Throughout the war of the Revolution the settlers of
Lockeport, unlike their neighbours at Liverpool, seem to
have kept out of active hostilities, though their sympathies
were strongly American. Their feelings were very much
hurt, therefore, when in 1779 some American privateers
came ashore and looted their houses, and an indignant
protest, signed by Jonathan Locke and several others, is
still to be found in the archives of Massachusetts. After
reciting how the scoundrels took from one house “nineteen
quintals of codfish, four barrels of salt, three salmon nets,
some cheese, and a great many other things,” this memorial
continues:
“These things are very surprising that we in this harbour
have done so much for America, that we have helped three
or four hundred prisoners up along to America, and given
part of our living to them, and have concealed privateers
and prizes too from the British cruisers in this harbour.
All this done for America, and if this be the way we are to
be paid, I desire to see no more of you without you come
in another manner.”
During the war of 1812 some excitement was caused by
the approach of a hostile vessel, at a time when most of the
men were away. The women and children were promptly
lined up on the bluff, with red coats and broomsticks to
lend a martial appearance, while some of the women
marched up and down with a drum, and shots were fired
with the available muskets and fowling pieces. The enemy
made good their escape.
On a burning July day I stood on the seashore and
looked out on Port Mouton (pronounced Ma-toon), and in
my mind’s eye saw two ghosts. One was of the immortal
sheep which fell over the taffrail of De Monts’s ship three
centuries ago; the other was the ghost of the town of
Guysborough. Do not be misled, dear reader; there is
still a Guysborough in New Scotland; but it is another
place, hundreds of miles away, which has clothed itself, so
to speak, with the name of its deceased predecessor as with
a garment. That Guysborough is at Chedabucto Bay, and
flourishes; this Guysborough was at Port Mouton, and is
dead more than a century and a quarter.
Settled by pioneers of Massachusetts stock was Liverpool.
I was told that there are even more descendants of the
original Pilgrim Fathers in this little New Liverpool on the
southern shore of New Scotland, in proportion to the population,
than in Massachusetts itself. A warrant to survey a
township was granted in 1759 by the Governor of Nova
Scotia to a committee representing some one hundred and
forty-two proprietors, all of New England, and many of
them direct descendants of the _Mayflower_ pilgrims.
But a century and a half before this, in 1604, Sieur de
Monts had entered the harbour and named it Port Rossignol,
after a certain captain whom he found unwittingly poaching
on his preserves, and whose vessel he confiscated. This
was on the famous voyage that led to the selection of Port
Royal (now Annapolis Royal) as the best site for a
settlement.
Later Port Rossignol formed part of La Tour’s La
Héve, under the protection of the fort there; and, though
the fisheries were considered of some importance, the
settlements were small and by no means permanent.
At the period when the hardy ancestors of the present
inhabitants of Liverpool fixed on this as a site for settlement,
the peninsula was almost a solitude. There were a few
unfortunate Acadians who had made their homes with the
Indians, and the Annapolis valley was from end to end
a scene of desolation, extending for many miles to the
eastward and westward. There were two small military
posts, one at Annapolis and a second at Windsor. Halifax
had only been founded about ten years. At Lunenburg
some unfortunate Germans had been making a desperate
struggle for about six years.[16]
[Footnote 16: D. R. Jack, _Acadiensis_.]
Hither came in 1760 a number of New England families
attracted by the well-sheltered haven, the fine river, the
salmon fishing, and also, I think, already conscious of the
spirit of insubordination and unrest in the older colonies
they quitted. Those early immigrants endured during the
first few seasons severe privations, one winter subsisting
almost wholly upon wild rabbits. But others came to join
them, until, in a couple of years, they numbered eighty
families. They continued to thrive; the settlement was
formed into a township of 100,000 acres, and divided
amongst them into 200 shares. A century ago the population
was close upon 1000 souls.
During the American Revolution the American
privateers proved a constant source of annoyance and
actual damage, and there is ample proof that the
Liverpudlians were at least justified in retaliating in
kind. In 1779 several of them obtained Letters of
Marque from the British Government, with assistance for
arming vessels, and a grant for a block-house and
barracks.
Smuggling, too, was a popular pursuit; one citizen
in 1782 is recorded as having turned informer, and
shortly afterwards the Government offered a reward of
£20 for information leading to the conviction of the
person or persons who had cut off the said citizen’s ears.
Throughout the Revolutionary War, the subsequent
strife between England, and France, and Spain, and the
later war with America, Liverpool privateers are frequently
heard of. Many a prize was brought in triumph into
Liverpool Harbour, and the little town emerged richer
and more prosperous than before. I have read somewhere
that the great fortune of the Hon. Enos Collins,
long reputed the richest man in the province, and himself
Liverpool born, though trading from Halifax, was founded
on the winnings of his privateer captains.[17]
[Footnote 17: “Those were busy times in the town,” writes Mr. Charles
Warman, of Liverpool. “Sailors and ship’s carpenters abounded. Nightly
they would meet in some public-house, and many tales of interesting
adventures were told, while often shipmates who had been separated for
years, and had been to all parts of the globe, would come together and
be joyful.
“Then vessels often went below the bar to complete loading—a thing
practically unknown to-day, owing to the deepening of the channel—when
the lumber would be rafted to them. If an easterly gale came upon them
they had to hoist anchor and put back to the wharves. Occasionally from
the storm there was the loss of ship and crew. As an instance, the barques
_Wave_ and _Kate Campbell_, that had lain below for some days completing
cargoes, were caught and piled up, one near Sandy Cove, the other upon
the Fort—both total wrecks, neither having ever been to sea. At that time
a schooner from Newfoundland, bound west, had sought shelter here, and
she also went ashore. Every one of its sailors was flung lifeless upon the
beach. The loss of any craft to-day in the harbour is a rare occurrence.”]
Haliburton, in 1829, wrote: “Liverpool is the best
built town in Nova Scotia. The houses are substantially
good and well painted, and there is an air of regularity
and neatness in the place which distinguishes it from every
other town in this province.”
Unhappily, lack of railway communication kept the
town back, but within the past few years Liverpool is
with great strides overtaking competitors. There are now
a fine water and electric light service, first-class hotels,
electric marine slip and shipyards, a foundry, machine-shop,
and corn-mill.
The river Mersey is a rapid stream with numerous falls
for nineteen and one-half miles from “Indian Garden” to
Liverpool. A lake system of fifty square miles supplies
the river, and when properly developed will make Milton
and Liverpool cheap and popular manufacturing centres.
The canoe trip through the lakes and rivers hereabouts
is well worth taking. The grounds of the old
fort are now a public park. But the old block-house
has vanished here as it has from Annapolis, and some
forty cannon of early George III. type are used for street
corner posts.
With its lighthouse and cannon, turf, seats, and shade,
and magnificent outlook over the harbour, Liverpool Fort
is a most agreeable lounging place, and a romantic terminus
to Liverpool’s street of bright shops, public buildings, and
neat residences. The Fort was actually captured in 1780
by an unexpected night attack led by a Yankee named
Benjamin Cole. “The townsmen,” one reads, “were
inclined to think resistance useless, but Colonel Simeon
Perkins (the ‘man of the time’ in Liverpool) arranged
for the capture of Cole on his way through the town,
and with him safely in hand was enabled to dictate to
the enemy most favourable terms of redress, capitulation,
and retreat. So ended the _Siege of Liverpool_.”
Close to the Fort is a picturesque little cove, where
shipbuilding is still carried on, and where a group of
old houses still remain, including the Customs House.
To-day, besides the fishery, the great resource of the
town is the sawing and export of timber, surrounded as
it is by almost inexhaustible forests. Large quantities of
wood-pulp are also produced here. Altogether Liverpool
to-day is a busy, pleasant little town, whose prosperity and
whose prospects have been vastly increased by the advent
of the Halifax and South-Western Railway a few years ago.
Connected with the lumber industry, the prominence
now attained by pulp-wood and wood-pulp deserves a
word. Owing to the increased demand made by the
paper mills of America for raw materials, and the decreasing
supply of home-grown wood, for the year ending
30th June 1910, the States imported from Canada
897,226 cords of pulp-wood, valued at $5,660,542.00,
and of mechanical, chemical, bleached, and unbleached
wood-pulp to the value of $4,224,500.00, an importation
from Canada of pulp-wood and wood-pulp of $9,885,042.00,
as against a total importation of $5000 in 1880.
The total quantity of pulp-wood consumed by the
253 paper mills of the States during 1910 was 4,002,000
cords, valued at $34,478,000.00, of which, according to
the figures given above, Canada furnished more than
one-fifth in quantity and one-sixth in value.
Nova Scotia, as well as New Brunswick, possesses large
pulp-wood areas and excellent water-power; would it not
seem that an attractive field was open either to Nova
Scotian or British capitalists?
The wise policy of the Government in withdrawing
from sale the remaining Crown Lands of the Province,
estimated at about one and one half millions of acres,
should, under proper regulations, give the country a
valuable reserve.[18]
In addition to these shipments, which were composed
largely of deal, there were exports of laths, shingles, piling,
and some square timber hardwood, together with the
quantity used locally, which of course largely augmented
the value of the total export.
Spruce is the staple lumber tree of Nova Scotia. Prices
for this wood have not declined or indeed fluctuated during
the last two years as much as some other native woods,
notably hemlock and pine.
[Footnote 18: The following table shows the exports of lumber from the
ports of Nova Scotia in 1911:—
Feet.
Halifax. 43,000,000
Lunenburg. 48,269,113
Bear River. 3,500,000
Pugwash. 19,204,020
Liverpool. 5,954,000
Maitland. 5,147,744
Pictou. 12,227,164
Sherbrooke. 4,500,000
Weymouth. 12,000,000
Ingram Docks. 9,000,000
Yarmouth. 13,597,452
Colchester. 70,000,000
Windsor. 12,000,000
Hantsport. 4,500,000
Walton. 1,200,000
Cheverie. 200,000
Parrsboro. 32,000,000
———————————
Total 214,368,493
An addition to the output of spruce, hemlock, and pine, which figures
so largely as the product of the portable and stationary mills for
export, consists in the cutting of “ton-timber”—hardwoods for English
and South American markets, of which about 12,000 tons are taken out of
Colchester woods. This variety is cut and hewed square with axes, and
is brought to the shipping points when sledging is good.]
Very little hardwood finds its way to the saw-mills for
export as deals or planks. Then there is the cutting of
poplar for the manufacture of excelsior; of birch and ash,
and beech and elm, for the manufacture of chairs and
furniture; of yellow birch for the manufacture of spring-bed
frames and peg wood; and of white birch for the
making of spool wood, the latter being produced mostly in
the Stewiackes. Finally, there is a cut of juniper and
hackmatack, and other woods of no mean proportions used
for railway ties and pit props.