Item
Beacon
Feb 25, 1907
The Loyalists of St. Andrews
A lengthy paper on The Loyalists of St. Andrews was recently read before the Canadian Literature Club of St. Andrews by Mr. R. E. Armstrong, President of the Club. Copious extracts were made from the writings of Mr. James Vroom, Prof. Ganong and Dr. G. U. Hay; the Session Records of Charlotte County, the minute books of the Friendly Society of St. Andrews and of the St. Andrews and Quebec Railroad Association and also from the Educational Report of New Brunswick.
The writer of the paper described our Loyalist forefathers as “sturdy defenders of the British flag and British crown when the colony to the south rose in rebellion against the King. They were men who were willing to sacrifice—and who did sacrifice in many cases—all that was near and dear to them for the sake of their country. They were patriots in the truest and broadest sense of the word. . . . Wealth, position, domestic happiness—all that men prize most—these men gave up for the country they loved. . . . We honor the glorious deeds, the noble self-sacrifice of our loyalist ancestry. We prize their memory in our hearts. What grander foundation could a young nation rest upon than the heritage of such noble, self-sacrificing patriotism! . . .
As to the character of these men and women—for the women were as brave and as loyal as the men—their very act of heroic self-sacrifice stamps their character. . . . They were men of broad outlook; strong, manly men; men of erudition and refinement; men without fear, except that fear of God; men who could grapple with any question, graduates of the best schools of learning in the world, shrewd in business—these were the men who laid the foundations of this Canada of our. . . . Looking about us today, noting our well laid out town, with its broad streets and magnificent shade trees, we can see reflected in them the character of the loyalists of 1783. Everything indicates cultured minds, refined, aesthetic tastes and sturdy manhood. What they did they did well. If there is any room for regret in this connection at all it is that their descendants have made such little progress along the lines marked out by them and that the beautiful town which they fashioned in this little corner of the empire has not as yet realized the fond hopes that its founders entertained for it.”
As Mr. Jas. Vroom’s contributions to the paper possess great historical value they are herewith appended:
“On my arrival at Passamaquoddy the 23rd Sept. I found there had been several Surveyors exploring the rivers, and a number of settlers taken possession of St. Andrews Point. . . . I also received information that two public Surveyors were there in the place for the purpose of laying out townships. . . . On the 3rd of October two large transports and several smaller vessels with a number of families arrived at St. Andrews from Badaduce (Castine). . . . I passed by the ships and cautioned them not to land any inhabitants. But a few days after the whole were landed to the amount of forty families. By what I can learn from good authority, the general plan of the Britons is to claim all the lands which produce lumber in the bay of Passamaquoddy as being under the jurisdiction of Nova Scotia. A company composed of a number of wealthy persons, among the rest Pagan, formerly of Casco Bay, one of the prinipal managers, intend to carry on the business to a great amount at Passamaquoddy.”—Extracts from a letter of Col. John Allan to the Governor of Massachusetts, December, 1783.
Robert Pagan was born at Glasgow, Scotland, in 1750. While still a young man he carried on an extensive business in lumbering at Falmouth (now Portland, Maine). He died at St. Andrews in 1821, leaving no children. William Pagan was a brother, I believe, and Thomas and Robert junior were probably nephews. (for more extended notice of Judge Pagan and others, see Sabine’s Loyalists of the American Revolution.) As a businessman, a representative in the legislature, a colonel of militia, and a magistrate and judge of the local courts, Robert Pagan had an important influence in the conduct of affairs in this county in its early days. There is a memorial tablet in All Saints Church, and Pagan’s Cove at Oak Bay (formerly Pagan’s Mill Cove) and Pagan Street, St. Stephen, perpetuate the name. Jeremiah Pote, father in law of Robert Pagan, was also a merchant of Falmouth proscribed and banished for loyalty. He died at St. Andrews in 1796, at the age of seventy-one. (See Sabine)
Thomas Wyer, another son-in-law of Captain Jeremiah Pote, who became first Sheriff of the county, had been a customs officer at Falmouth. I judge that he was the writer of a letter dated at Penobscot, Jan. 1784, which comes the nearest of anything we have to giving the date of the final evacuation of Castine; and which, if my guess of the authorship is right, allows that there was a sort of family compact in the management of the enterprise.
“I expect four or five days to leave . . . as this place will be evacuated in the course of a fortnight. I shall move to a place called St Andrews, Passamaquoddy , in Nova Scotia, on the western side of the Bay of Fundy. . . . The inhabitants of this place all intend settling there, many having been there three months and have got houses erected to the number of sixty or seventy. . . . Capt. Pote, Robert Pagan and myself are agents for all the people who intend settling there.”
The following are the names of the 178 men actually present at St. Andrews, by a muster roll of June 10, 1784, with whom were 102 women, 206 children over ten years of age, and 163 children under ten:—
Jeremiah Pote. (Above mentioned)
Colin Campbell came from Scotland during the war. Did business as a merchant in St. Andrews for a few years but was not financially successful. Returned to Scotland in 1808. (It may have been he, instead of Thomas Wyer, who wrote the letter above quoted.) His eldest son, Donald, was one of the children under ten t eh date of the muster roll. He afterwards became a rear admiral and married a sister of Sir Howard Douglass. Three other boys are named in the muster roll: Alexander, John and Colin. The latter became Sheriff of the country in 1833, and died in St. Andrews in 1843. He alone, of a ramily of twelve brothers and sisters reMained in the province. He married a daughter of Capt. James Campbell, of Pennfield, cousin of Sir Archibald, who was afterwards Governor of the province. (He is not the Colin Campbell who was at one time Collector of Customs at St. Andrews and president of the Charlotte County Bank.) John Campbell of Barbeck, colonel of the 74th and commandant of the forces at Castine, afterwards made bridadier general, was a nephew of the Colin Campbell of the muster roll. As head of the firm of John Campbell and Co., he succeeded his uncle in the businss at St. Andrews when, I believe, the latter went to St. John, where he was in government employ for some time before his return to Scotland. Gen. Campbell’s name does not appear in the roll of the Penobscot settlers, at St. Andrews (this list) because he was mustered among the members of the seventy-fourth Association, but he is, most probably, one of the John Campbells of the grant.
Robert Pagan (Above mentioned)
Moses Gerrish. Graduate of Harvard in the class of 1762. For many years a magistrate in Grand Manan, where he died in 1830. (See Sabine)
Thomas Wyer (Above mentioned)
William Gallop. Gave name to Gallop Stream at the head of Oak Bay where he ahad a mill. Was one of the first magistrates appointed after the arrival of the Loyalists. Registrar of deeds, 1786-9.
John Jones. Capt. Jones was one of the surveyors who laid out the lands for the loyalists in Charlotte County. Formerly a surveyor for the Plymouth Company, he made several fine settlements at Kennebec before the war. He lost an ample fortune for his attachment to the British cause.
Alexander Linklighter.
Benjamin Milliken. Of his sixteen or more children, two settled permanently in St. George. One Dominicus, is the ancestor of the Millikens of that plae and Eastport; the other became the wife of Stewart Seelye, a Pennfield Loyalist, from whom are descended the Seeley’s of St. George.
Thomas Ross. From Falmouth. Settled at Grand Manan where an island preserves his name. Did at sea in 1804.
Richard Pomeroy.
James Doty. Ancestor of the Doughty’s of Deer Island and the Dotens of Oak Bay.
Robertson Croker. Properly Robinson Croker, as in the grant. Was here before the Loyalists came, and his loyalty before that time had been very questionable, if St. Stephen traditions may be accepted. Yet he was chosen as one of the first vestrymen of St. Stephen, when the church corporation was organized in 1802. He came from some part of New England.
John Dowling.
William Swain. A man of property who came with the Loyalists from Castine. He engaged in lumbering on the St. Croix and built the first mill at what is now called Milltown. Afterwards in business at St. Andrews for some years.
David Eastman
George Wisely
Moses Barnard
John McIntosh. Owned farm back of town. From his daughter, Katy, the cove here got its name of Katy’s Cove.
Peter Vallett
Edmund Dougherty
John Hefferman
Finlay Malcom
John Doggett
Joseph Milligan
Wm. Redhead
Matthew Limeburner. Limeburner’s Lake preserves his name.
Duncan McEchran
Amos Hitchins
John Hall
William Gammons. Properly William Gammon. The spelling of names in this list is faulty owing apparently to copying from the original sheets into the record books. The name of William Gammon is prominent from the accident of its appearing first on the grant of the St. Andrews town lots as he drew lot No. 1. He died within a year, leaving his property to a son of the same name who sold to Robert Pagan.
David Arnott
Silas Cummings.
William towers. From him the name of Tower Hill at which place he died in 1835. He was engaged in building the court at Castine and is said to have built the first house at St. Andrews after the removal, possibly not for himself, but as a master builder. Tehre is a traditon that his wife jumped from the boat and waded ashore in her eagerness to be the first to land on the site of their new home.
Zebedec Hammond
William Cookson
Andrew Patton
Eben Greenlaw
James Russell. Passed his winter on his Bay Side farm lot (probably the winter of 1784-5) in a shelter hollowed out of the bank at Sandy point, presumably engaged in clearing the land, while his family reMained in town. Afterwars found among the trees on the point, remains of an old French building that could easily have made habitable.
Samuel Kelly
Zebedec Linniken
Timothy Roax
Lauchland McCurdy
Michael Ryan
Morris Henly
Thomas Hailey
James Simmonds
John Lilly. Gave name to Lilly Hill, at the head of Oak Bay, where his farm lot lay.
John Rigby
John Baldwin
James Hannah
James Thomson
Joseph Smith
Joel Bragg
John Davis
Daniel Layman. This Daniel Leeman, who lived for a time at Oak Bay and then moved to Deer Island.
James Wordwill
David Daily
James Collins
Patrick Callaghan
John Cook
Andrew martin. Kept the St. Andrews Coffee House, which was taken down at Castine in December, 1785 and rebuilt at St. Andrews.
Benjamin Bradford. Descendant of Gov. Bradford of the Plymouth Colony Established the ferry from Bay Side to Oak Point, long known as Bradford’s ferry.
James Nicholson
John Taylor
Balthazar Stilkey. A surgeon. He reMained for a short time only.
John Bean
John Fowler
Ralph Taylor. A naval officer under Mowat at the siege of Penobscot. He was called into active service again in the French war of 1703 [sic]. Standing on his quarterdeck while a French vessel he had engaged was lowering her flag in token of surrender, he was fatally wounded by a musket ball from the enemy ship. He was said to have been heir to a valuable estate in the Island of Wight.
James Remington
James Piercy
Robert Munear
David Hill
William Harvey
Dugald Thomson
John Mathewson
Hugh Limey
Samuel B. Turner
James Stinton. Should of course be Stinson
William Stewart. Said to have owned a large property in Gloucester, Mass. Finally settled on Deer Island, and from him are descended the Stuart of that place.
Andrew Peters
Samuel Trott
John McMillan
James Stewart
John Glayton
Henry Ross
Timothy Roax, senior
John Roax
Daniel Grant
James Turner
John A. Sowers
Benjamin Pomeroy. From Massachusetts. Pomeroy Ridge where he finally settled bears his name.
Nathaniel Bailey.
Stephen Robert s
David Shields
William Spencer
John Crawford
John Mott, junior
Moses Sprague. A pre-Loyalist settler after whom is name Sprague Falls.
Alex. Greenlaw
John Nason
Daniel Brown
Joseph Cruikshanks
Benjamin Milliken, junior
Matthew Thornton. Nephew of the signer of the Declaration of Independence. Escape from persecution after being imprisoned and acquitted. Came to St. Andrws or near there before the Loyalist settlers.
Thomas Bell
David Fog. Should be Fogo
Thomas Browne
James Doty, junior
Nathaniel Philips
Francis Welsh
David Wyer
Jeddiah Pribble. Possibily a pre-Loyalist and a relative of Capt. John preble; but the latter was one of the two pre-Loyalist settlers here that are known to have been actively disloyal, the other being James Boyd, who attempted to plant a colony at St. Andrews earlier.
David Mowatt. Properly Mowat. Son-in-law of Dr. Caleff, and cousin of Capt. Henry Mowat of Penobscot fame. (Possibly it was a younger David Mowat who was Caleff’s son-in-law. The marriage, I believe, took place in St. Andrews.)
John Long
Hugh McLeod
Gorge Gunn
John Limeburner
Robert Sim
Alexander Murphy
John McNichol
Natl. Palmer
Henry Fling
William Perry
Samuel Rogers
Donald McLean
FrederickHorn
Nevin Lindsay
Richard Mayher
James Simmington
John Calf. Dr. John Caleff, of Ipswich, Mass. Sent as delegate to Great Britain by the Castine Loyalists, to endeavor to have the Penobscot made the boundary line. Practiced as physician and surgeon at St. Andrews and died there 1812 aged 88.
William Moore. Of New Boston, N.H. Built the first mill at Moore’s Mills.
John Caslow. Should be Carlow
Thomas Dawson
Barnabas Higgins
Charles Sider Parken
Thomas Little John
Peter Little John
James Joyce
Edward Ross
Thomas Philips
Thomas Stewart
Peter Durham
Deniel Cornelius
Joseph black
John Martin
William David
Daniel Nason
Samuel Cochran
Rufus White
George Ross
John Bradley
John Mathew
John Edhron
Joseph Stout
John Fisher
William Vial
John Shields
Charles Stewart
James Phillips
John Priest
Colin Campbell. There were four lieutenants of this name in the Penobscot garrison. Probably this was one of them.
Alexander Morrison
John Gray
John Stevens
William Doty
William Ragan
Neil McCurdy
Cato, and six other negro men whose names are given, who had probably been slaves before the war.
It is significant that with those 178 men, there were 102 women and 369 children. The proportion of men in the other Passamaquoddy settlements was much greater. At Belle Vue (Beaver Harbour), with 192 men there were only 60 women and 112 children; at St. George’s Town, (L’Tang) with 108 men there were 40 women and 54 children; at Morristown (St. Stephen) 114 men, 48 women and 39 children; and in the Seventy-Fourth Association 125 men, 32 women and 48 children.
The 74th Argyle Highlanders, whose lands were at Digdeguash and Milltown, were nominally mustered at St. Andrews in May 1784. Some of them no doubt, were, actually present, and reMained to become permanent residents. Part of the regimen hd been disbanded at Castine on Christmas even, 1783. The association seems to have been formed later, probably at Halifax; and its members, or some of them, came to St. Andrews at the follow spring. With them, or scattered about elsewhere along the coast and Islands of Charlotte County, were discharged officers and soldiers of other regiments returned separately in the muster roll—the 84th, the 64th, the lat North Carolina Highlanders, the Nova Scotia Volunteers, the King’s Orange Rangers, the Royal Garrison Battalion, the Regiment of Specht, the 70th and two or three others. Among the prominent men of these military settlers may be mentioned the following, who resided in St. Andrews for a time, or have descendants now living there.
Of the 74th—Peter McCallum, Dugald Clarke, David Craig, John Cockburn, Walter McFarlan, Hugh Cameron, Duncan Mccoll.
Of the N.C. Highlanders—Lt. Col. Allan Stewart, Capt. Angus McDonald, Capt. Alex. McRe.
Among the Castine Loyalists whose names are not included in the user roll (for some reason which I cannot explain) were Daniel and James McMaster, who had been merchants in Boston and who, with the possible exception of the Pagans, may be safely regarded as the most prosperous merchants of St. Andrews in the early days.
John Dunn is another grantee not named in he muster roll, though he became a resident. He came from New York, and was perhaps not one of the Castine colony. He held important positions in St. Andrews, first as the second Sheriff of the county, and afterwards as comptroller of customs.
Another was John Fraser, who, in company with Gillam Butler and Capt. Thomas Storrow, did business at Campobello and St. Andrews.
These may have all been so well off that they would not accept the King’s bounty, and therefore were not enrolled, or they have been non-residents at the time.
I have reached the very unpleasant conclusion that I was in error stating, in Acadiensis and elsewhere, that the L’Etang settlers came from Castine and after the burning of their town mostly settled in St. Andrews. I was led into the error by the fact that a large number of the Penobscot Loyalists were grantees of town lots in St. George’s Town as well as in St. Andrews. That town, however, was laid out for the disbanded officers and men of the Royal Fencible Americans, who were landed there in sorry plight on the 10th of November, 1783. They had been disbanded at Fort Cumberland. The officers who came with them were Capt. Philip Bailey, Capt. Peter Clinch, and Lieutenant James McNabb. The only name on their muster roll of July 1784, that I recognize, as that of a later resident of St. Andrews is the name of Thomas Emmerson. He was a surgeon of the regiment and practiced for many years in St. Andrews.
It may still be true that some of the Castine men reenrolled as mustered at. Andrews really resided at L’Etang. Lieut. James Campbell, of the 54th, whose wife was of Castine, certainly did; though his youngest son, the late Postmaster Campbell, of St. Andrews, was born in Pennfield, where his father died. I cannot name any other individual except Dr. Emmerson. I have to thank you for leading me to this study of the muster rolls which has raised a doubt of the truth of the tradition or supposition that after the fire of 1790 there was a reunion at St. Andrews of the Castine Loyalists. I find now no ground for asserting that any considerable number of them lived in St. George’s Town.
That the French had dwelling houses at St. Andrews Point is by no means certain. I had thought that the house which Gourdan and his people were engaged in building at the time of Col. Church’s raid, 1704, was at this point. Dr. Ganong, whose judgments are pretty safe thinks it more probable that Pleasant Point was the place. There was certainly an old Indian burial plae, near where the CPR station stands; and there was the usual large wooden cross nearby probably facing the water near the harbor entrance. The priest named St. Andre, whose name was given to the point (if there ever was such a man) had a hut such as the Indians built for themselves, if he followed the usual missionary custom. There is no record of a church building and if one had been standing in 1704 Church would have been sure to mention it.
In 1767 James Boyd, a Scotsman, living on Indian Island and engaged in fishing and trading with the Indians applied to the Nova Scotia government for fifty thousand acres of land on condition of settling fifty families theron. The site included the present sites of St. Andrews and St. Stephen. Acting for Boyd, James Brown and Jeremiah Frost, in 1761 [sic] or the year previous, erected a hut near to where the public landing in St. Andrews now is, which was said to be the first building of any kind every put up by any English subject at or near that place. Boyd’s plans failed and though he claimed to have settled twenty-six families on the whole tract they probably left no permanent dwelling. Being disloyal, he found it advisable to leave before the close of the war. Some of his settlers reMained and their presence at Moose Island (Eastport) though they wer not active partisans, helped to hold that island by occupation for the state of Massachusetts.
Two Loyalist refugees, Ephraim Young and John Hanson, were living at St. Andrews when the Castine people came, the former probably on St. Andrews Island and the latter on Minister’s Island. It is not known that there were any houses on the town site and certainly no one but the Indians claimed it by occupation. I have a list of forty othes who were living along both sides of the river from Campbello to the head of the tide waters, and on the Digdeguash, exclusive of the Owen settlement on Campbello which was scattered by the war.