Between 80,000 and 100,000 Loyalists eventually fled from the United States, about half of them to Canada, making it by far the most important centre of refuge. The Maritimes became home for about 45,000 while some 9,500 went to Quebec. Of these, approximately 7,500 settled in what was then western Quebec, later to become Upper Canada and finally Ontario.1
A rough portrait of the white Ontario Loyalists can be sketched from the claims for war losses that 488 of them submitted to the British government shortly after the Revolution.2 What is striking about this first-hand testimony is that it almost entirely contradicts the American stereotype. These people had enjoyed neither wealth nor privilege. Only five of them had held public office, three in relatively modest positions: that of magistrate, town clerk and employee of the Indian Department. Of the other two, one had been the postmaster of the City of Albany and Albany County, the other the sheriff of Tryon County. There was only one among the claimants who by modern standards would have been considered a professional – a physician. Two were surgeons (one a surgeon-apothecary) and one a school teacher. A small number had been shopowners, tavern-keepers or artisans, and two had been shipowners. But ninety per cent of the Loyalists listed themselves simply as farmers.3
Although the average land claim was deceptively large – 191 acres, leased or owned – a full 42 per cent indicated that they had had less than ten acres cleared. The great majority of Ontario Loyalists were pioneer farmers, most of whom had resided in New York State, 54 per cent of those coming from the sprawling county of Tryon, then the western frontier of New York settlement.4 Tryon County included the Mohawk Valley, the acknowledged hotbed of loyalism in western New York. Albany County accounted for 25 per cent, while Charlotte County, which then included what is now Vermont, had 14 per cent.
Large numbers of these Ontario Loyalists would have spoken with accents, but their accents would not have been either English or affected, as the popular American image would suggest. Fifty-four per cent of the Ontario claimants were foreign-born and many probably did not speak English at all. Over half of them were Scots, a large proportion of them Gaelic-speaking Highland Roman Catholics. There was also a good number of Germans and Irish (most of whom would have been Scots-Irish), while a meagre 8 per cent (some thirty-nine individuals) were English by birth. Most of the foreign-born were quite recent immigrants. Those Scots who indicated the length of their residence had only been in the country an average of four years before the beginning of the Revolution; the English had been there eight years, the Irish, eleven, and the Germans, eighteen.
Faces of Loyalism: “Robert Kerr” (1764-1824), artist unknown
During the Revolution, Kerr was a surgeon’s mate at Machiche, the main Loyalist refugee camp in Quebec and after 1780, surgeon to the second battalion of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York. After the war, he was appointed surgeon to the Indian Department and settled at Niagara in 1789. He was a judge of the Surrogate Court at Niagara and grand master of the Provincial Grand Lodge. He married Elizabeth, a daughter of Molly Brant and Sir William Johnson.
George III Indian Chief Medal, ca. 1775-1783
The custom of issuing medals to enlist and maintain the support of the Indian tribes had been a well-established practice in North America since the Spanish and French regimes. During the Revolution, British medals were struck in some profusion. They came in several different sizes, to correspond with the significance of the recipient and some, for the purpose of economy, were hollow. The obverse of the medal is a youthful bust of George III, the reverse the royal arms and supporters. Many similar medals have symbolic scenes or commemorations of victories on their reverse. The lack of any really major victories in the Revolution, despite the many successes of the Loyalist regiments in the Northern Department, probably precluded such depictions on British revolutionary medals.
Certificate of Recognition, 1778
During the 1770s, the practice was introduced of granting commissions to the Indian chiefs to whom medals had been granted, recognizing their authority and investing them with their title. The one reproduced above was granted in 1778 to a chief of the Menominees by Frederick Haldimand, the governor of Canada, for his “fidelity, zeal and attachment” to the crown.
Not included among the Ontario Loyalists who filed claims were considerable numbers of blacks and Indians. The white Loyalists brought a sizable contingent of slaves with them to Ontario, and free blacks and escaped slaves also fought directly in the Loyalist corps. Even more significant numerically were the Indians. The largest group of Ontario Loyalists after the native-born whites were the true natives of America. Over two thousand Indian allies of the crown – Six Nations Iroquois from New York, Delawares and Mingoes of the Ohio Country and a scattering of Creeks, Cherokees and other tribes from the southern colonies – had settled in Ontario by 1785.
Small though their initial numbers were, the Loyalist groups which came to Upper Canada were thus remarkably diverse in their origins. Major John Ross, the British commander at Cataraqui (Kingston) who was responsible for assisting the largest number of them to settle, regarded his charges with frank bewilderment. “Strange,” he wrote to his superiors, “is the collection of people here.”5
Why did such a range of people – Negro, Indian, German, Scots, Scots-Irish and English as well as native-born colonists – support the royal cause? There is no simple answer. The American Revolution was a complex conflict, a civil war fought within a war of colonial liberation by thirteen loosely knit colonies each with its own distinctive pattern of development. Within that tortuous configuration, there was plenty of room for a welter of often contradictory motives for supporting the king or his enemies. The conflict cut through class, occupational, religious and ethnic lines; at least some members of every conceivable grouping would be found on both sides in the war.
Ideology was perhaps the most widely shared motivation for loyalty. A personal attachment to the crown and the fear of the impact of the Revolution on American society were major factors in the decisions of many colonists. This is not to say that Loyalists were necessarily rigid reactionaries. Many, if not most, Loyalists agreed with the rebels (or Patriots or Whigs as they were often called) that America had suffered wrongs at the hands of the mother country. Unlike the rebels, they believed that the solution to those ills could be worked out inside the Empire. Many were staunch believers in the continuing value of the British connection. Most had never known any rule but that of the crown and not a few cherished a deep attachment to Great Britain and British culture as well as a sincere admiration for the British form of government. When new and untried leaders, radicals and demagogues as they appeared to the Loyalists, threatened the link to Great Britain by mob violence and extra-legal action, the Loyalists resisted. They sincerely believed that the Revolution would degenerate into anarchy or despotism. The final result, they affirmed, could be that the colonies would end up as a satellite of a foreign power or as mendicants begging for re-entry into the British Empire.
The Persecution of a Loyalist: a 1774 mezzotint, artist unknown
The victim is John Malcom or Malcomb, commissioner of customs in Boston. In January 1774 he was tarred and feathered, half-hanged and forced to drink enormous quantities of tea. Many other royalists would suffer similar fates in the course of the Revolution. The cockade in the hat of the assailant on the right marks him out as one of the Sons of Liberty. The “45” on the other hat refers
