Nova Scotia was the premier destination for loyalists fleeing the American Revolution (1775-1783), which they viewed as a civil war against the British Empire. Nova Scotia, which at the time included present-day New Brunswick, was fertile ground for the loyalist transplants, both physically and politically.
The revolution from the loyalists’ point of view
The movement of American loyalists from New York to Nova Scotia is meticulously documented by Maya Jasanoff in Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2011). Jasanoff describes the “loyalist diaspora” from the viewpoint of the colonists who remained loyal to the monarchy and the British officials who tried to quell a populist uprising against their authority.
Acadia was the backwater of New France
For two hundred years, the French-speaking habitants of Acadie aka Acadia aka Nova Scotia had plied their skills in enriching and expanding their naturally rich land along the shores of the Bay of Fundy. They used a system called aboiteaux: Wooden sluices were placed at the edge of low, marshy grassland, and, as the tidal water drained away, the rich silt from the tidal river would remain. Tide by tide, day by day, year by year, decade by decade, Acadian farmers built up their farmland until it was the envy of farmers in Canada, the other part of New France, to the point of the Acadians being called lazy because they had to do so little to improve their land, unlike the Canadians who had to clear thick forest and fertilize thin, rocky soil or deal with revitalizing light alluvial soil.
War in the Old World travelled to the New World
The sweet life of the Acadian farmer changed in the 1750s when the British, who were the legal holders of Nova Scotia at the time — title to the province changed hands between France and Britain a dozen times since 1605 — demanded that all French-speaking residents swear allegiance to the British Empire. To the habitants, such a change in loyalty also meant abandoning their Catholicism for Anglicanism because the English king was head of both church and state.
Le Grand Dérangement removed half of the Acadians from their land
The habitants balked. Most refused to sign a loyalty oath to Britain. Some families moved to Quebec, a French stronghold. Others decided to wait it out, hoping that this was just another dust-up. But this time it was gunpowder and the dust of thousands of soldiers’ boots that filled the air. The British in North America could not ignore the unrest in its American colonies nor the threat from enemies (France and Spain) in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) and took steps to watch their back and remove a potential revolt by French colonists in Acadia. In 1755, the male heads of family of habitants who had refused to sign allegiance to the Crown were rounded up in the church at Grande Pré and told they and their families were going to be removed from the land that day. The Acadian Diaspora, le Grand Dérangement, was on.
When the diaspora was over, approximately seven thousand persons had been forcefully removed from Acadia and sent to France, Britain (as prisoners), or to other British colonies. The absence of so many colonists left a huge emptiness in Nova Scotia. To fill the void, in came the loyalists fleeing the unstable situation in the American colonies to the south, from Florida to Massachusetts and the Province of Maine. It was a trickle at first. Many people did not expect the colonial rebels to win over professional British soldiers and Hessians. The deluge hit in 1783, after the signing of the Treaty of Paris. More than 100,000 loyalists, freed slaves, and troops evacuated the now-independent American territory. New York City saw the departure of more than 30,000 loyalists, half of whom took ship for Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Swept into the tide of war
The trading post officials and craftsmen in New France had been hand picked by the agents of the fur trade monopolies. The men who were granted vast estates, the seigneurs, were approved by the king of France. Immigration to Canada and Acadia was tightly regulated and slow. The population in Quebec grew more quickly after the successful campaign in 1665-1668 by the Regiment Carignan-Salieres against the Iroquois, who had continually raided and harassed the trading posts and colonists until rebuffed by the regiment. North America became a safer place to live, especially as 400 members of that elite force decided to accept the government’s offer of free land if they stayed to farm and be part of the local militia. To further entice the former military men to stay, about 700 eligible women, call filles du roi (king’s daughters) in France were given a dowry and transportation to Canada in exchange for their agreement to marry a suitable bachelor and set up housekeeping.
The French colony was limited not only in number but in territory. Neither the companies who held fur trade monopolies nor the native American Indian tribes wanted settlers to clear land west and north of Montreal. The companies did not want game habitat to be destroyed and the native people did not want their land to be taken from them. By mutual agreement, European style development started in Quebec City and spread along the shores of the St. Lawrence River. Each family of the premier rang, the first row of lots along the river, farmed a long stretch of land that had narrow frontage on the water. Subsequent rangs were laid out behind the first with a road running between them. Farms and roads eventually stretched along the river from Quebec City to Montreal, and the road that runs between them is called the longest “main street” in North America.
Sources:
- “King’s Daughters,” www.fillesduroi.org/src/kings_daughters.htm>, La société des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan, Inc., 12 Sept. 2010. Downloaded 28 October 2011.
- Jasanoff, Maya. Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2011)
Denise Larson - Denise Larson is an author, editor, and freelance writer, mostly of history and genealogy, and a hobbyist in gardening and healthy ...
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