Plaques at Pointe de Bute Cemetery, New Brunswick, commemorating the Reverend William Black, pioneer Methodist preacher, and the introduction by him of Methodism in Canada.
You will expect to hear how it fared with me and the rest of the English in the time of the siege. 1
NATHANIEL SMITH AND the other Yorkshire people living near Fort Cumberland were suffering more than most during the American War of Independence (1775–83), having been subjected to regular attacks by American privateers (legalized pirates) and to an actual siege by a small group of rebels. Understandably, as their houses and barns came under attack, many left the area, including the families of Nathaniel and John Smith who moved to Cornwallis (Kings County) and Newport (near Windsor) respectively, and Christopher Harper and family who relocated just a short distance to Sackville.2
Faced with marauding privateers and a population dominated by New Englanders, whose loyalty to Britain was questionable, Governor Legge tried to take preventive action. Although the risk of an all-out invasion by an American army seemed slight, Legge felt that the Atlantic region required a localized defence capability. So, shortly after the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, he called for a provincial militia and a tax to support it, but such was the outcry from local inhabitants that the legislation had to be dropped. Two hundred and forty-six people in Cumberland County, a group that included fifty-five Yorkshiremen, signed a petition stating that they did not wish to enlist for military service. Having just arrived a year or so earlier, the Yorkshire settlers said they needed to establish their farms. They stated that the raising of a militia would deplete the area of its men and compound an already serious labour shortage, thus jeopardizing their livelihoods. When a regiment of British soldiers arrived at Halifax, the need for a homegrown militia subsided, but the continuing discontent of American sympathizers ensured that turmoil would persist.
In the summer of the following year, a small band of rebels formed under Jonathan Eddy, a long-term resident of the Chignecto Isthmus. Having failed to persuade George Washington, the American commanderin-chief, to mount an invasion of Nova Scotia, he recruited a private army himself, finding his men chiefly from Machias (now in Maine) and Maugerville (now in New Brunswick).3 In all, Eddy gathered around 180 men, only a minority of whom were residents of the Cumberland area. His group made their way toward the British outpost at Fort Cumberland in November, where, joined by a few local residents, they mounted an attack. But the siege was quickly suppressed by British reinforcements who had rushed to the fort. Two hundred marines and Royal Fencible Americans swiftly overcame Eddy’s men and then scoured the countryside in search of rebels, torching the houses and barns of anyone whose loyalties were felt to be suspect.4 Some rebels escaped behind American lines, leaving behind wives and families to be abused and sworn at until they could be exchanged for Loyalist prisoners three years later.5
Hit-and-run attacks by American privateers were widespread in the Atlantic region from 1776 to 1782. Defenceless coastal communities were plundered and vessels at sea had their provisions and valuables looted. Guerrilla raids brought commerce to a halt and caused severe food shortages, especially in Newfoundland and the Island of St. John (Prince Edward Island). Back in England, the Poole merchant Benjamin Lester learned through his Newfoundland agent that cargoes of seal skins and seal oil were ready to be loaded in his vessels anchored at Trinity Bay but that privateers were lurking. They had already seized the ship of someone known to him and boarded two of his other ships. Fleeing with a salt cargo and much of the ships’ rigging and guns and ammunition, the privateers gave Lester one crumb of comfort in that “they did not injure the ships.”6
Plaque at Fort Beauséjour, erected in 1927. Built by the French in 1751, the fort was captured by the British in 1755 and renamed Fort Cumberland. The plaque commemorates the loyalty of the Yorkshire people who supported the British side.
In these troubled times an evangelist by the name of Henry Alline emerged and made his mark in the region. Of New England extraction, he had come to Falmouth, Nova Scotia, as a child with his family during the Planter migration of the 1760s. Having been weighed down for many years by “a load of guilt and darkness, praying and crying continually for mercy,”7 Alline suddenly found himself, at the age of twenty-six, being called by God. He would go on to lead a popular religious revival known as the “Great Awakening” of Nova Scotia. Its beginnings can be traced back to March 26, 1775, a day when Alline, having read the 38th Psalm in the Bible, felt as if “redeeming love broke into my soul … with such power, that my whole soul seemed to be melted down with love.”8 After a year of intense agonizing he decided to go forth and preach about God’s redeeming love. He confined his preaching circuit to the Annapolis Valley until after 1779, when he gradually extended his reach to Nova Scotia’s south shore, the Island of St. John, and parts of the territory that would become New Brunswick. He attracted large crowds and usually preached outdoors, since most church buildings were closed to him.
Alline’s rejection of tradition and embracing of an individual’s inner feelings made him particularly appealing to New World settlers. He spoke of a loving God before whom all people were equal. It was essentially an egalitarian message that transcended the harshness and tribulations of everyday life. And his conviction that all people were capable of salvation in the next world brought enormous comfort to countless people who were caught up in the chaos and economic uncertainty of the war years. Organizing two churches in the Minas Basin region, one in Annapolis County and others in Liverpool and Maugerville — all areas where traditional churches were weak or absent — he roused nonconformist Nova Scotia to its core. But the so-called “New-Light” churches that he founded in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick did not remain true to his teachings, reverting, after his death in 1784, to Baptist churches that adopted more sober and conservative ways.9
Memorial stone to Henry Alline, United Baptist Church, Falmouth.
Following Britain’s defeat in the American Revolutionary War, officially recognized by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, around forty thousand people who had taken the British side (known collectively as Loyalists) fled from what became the independent country of the United States and sought sanctuary in the British-held northern colonies. The Loyalist influx had an explosive impact on the Atlantic region’s population.
Receiving land grants and financial help under the British Loyalist Assistance program, about thirty-five thousand refugees moved to Nova Scotia, while another five thousand went to the old province of Quebec.10 When New Brunswick was divided from the peninsula as a separate colony in 1784, around fifteen thousand Loyalists would find themselves in it, and around nineteen thousand would be in Nova Scotia. Taken together, these Loyalists doubled the population of peninsular Nova Scotia and swelled the population count to the north of the Bay of Fundy by fivefold.11 Only about six hundred Loyalists were allocated land in Prince Edward Island, but, because of great difficulty in obtaining grants, many left.12 This was the case despite attempts by the island’s proprietors and government to attract Loyalists. It was a similar situation in Cape Breton, created as a separate colony in 1785. Having acquired about four hundred Loyalists initially, it probably only had around two hundred by 1786.
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