New Boston to New Brunswick:
Anonymous Loyalists in New Hampshire
T. W. AchesonUniversity of New Brunswick
1 LOYALISM IS A COMPLEX CONCEPT. Originally restricted to tories and those who took up arms for the crown, the term Loyalist has, in recent years, come to encompass colonists demonstrating a variety of attitudes, behaviours and experiences. While the story of the refugees and their resettlement has been well told, relatively little attention has been given to the communities in which the Loyalists originated, and even less to those found in areas early controlled by the revolutionaries. Royal officeholders and others with clear interests in the imperial connection often fled these areas, but the mass of the people, lacking either the opportunity or the resources to become refugees, remained in their communities throughout the struggle. For many colonists living in rebel territory, for whom real options were not possible, support for the rebel cause was, at the least, ambiguous. Following the conflict some of them chose to move to British territory. In subsequent Loyalist historiography, these refugees, who frequently did not fit the conventional definitions of Loyalist, were either omitted from serious consideration or designated post-Loyalists. This essay examines one such group of New Hampshire emigrés to New Brunswick in an effort to understand the circumstances which led to their move. Its primary concern is with the community in which they were able to live as anonymous Loyalists for more than a decade. Their frontier experience in New Hampshire and their whiggish attitudes provide insight into the world view that produced one variety of loyalism.
2 The Cape Ann Association was formed in 1784 by people who petitioned for land under the British crown. While its members included proscribed tories and coastal merchants, virtually all of the New Hampshire people who actually moved to New Brunswick were members of farm families from the town of New Boston. It is the 18th century colonial experience of these anonymous Americans, and particularly the factors that led many of them to return to their ancient allegiance, that constitute the subject of this study. The Loyalists of New Hampshire formed only one association and founded a single group settlement in British territory in the years following the American Revolution. Yet no mention of this group or of their settlement is found in the five major studies of New Hampshire and the Revolution produced between 1917 and 1996, and the existence of the settlement is only grudgingly acknowledged in the Loyalist historiography of New Brunswick.1 The reasons for this are found in the perceptions of historians and the definitions which they have used to define the concept of Loyalist.
3 For more than a half century the most influential work on the Loyalists of New Hampshire was Otis Grant Hammond’s 1917 study, Tories of New Hampshire in the American Revolution.2 Hammond defined a royalist as one who maintained an allegiance to the monarch through the stress of rebellion. He contended that there were few royalists in New Hampshire: by his definition they comprised only the small number of individuals who were actually proscribed by the New Hampshire Congress.3 Hammond’s influence was felt well beyond his state. As executive director of the New Hampshire Historical Society he was part of a network of professional and amateur local historians working in the United States and Canada at the turn of the century. His opinions influenced the contemporary work of James Vroom of St Stephen, New Brunswick, the author of a study of the Loyalist settlement of Charlotte County. The Cape Ann Association, which included a large number of New Hampshire people, was among those individuals and groups petitioning for land at the conclusion of the American Revolution. Vroom concluded that the members of that Association were not genuine Loyalists but rather displaced land hungry farmers who saw an opportunity to acquire free crown land in Nova Scotia.4 This became the accepted wisdom concerning the newcomers and their settlements in St David Parish. The judgement was accepted by subsequent historians and became part of the canon of Loyalist scholarship.5
4 Loyalist scholarship subsequently moved beyond the rigid identification of Loyalists with tories to a broader identification of Loyalists with a much more numerous and socially diverse group than that determined by Hammond and his contemporaries, one which included cultural minorities, Indians, the inhabitants of frontier areas, and people often accidentally caught behind British lines. In his 1961 monograph, The American Tory, W.H. Nelson painted in broad strokes a picture of the Loyalists as a compound of minority groups drawn from the different colonies. He further argues that it was not incomprehensible that this amalgam of ethnic, religious, racial and geographic minorities might have comprised a majority of the people living in British America in the 1770s.6 Nelson’s group analysis is continued in a more careful, tentative and documented fashion by Wallace Brown who emphasized the differing experiences of similar groups in different colonies.7 Both Nelson and Brown assert the significance of the traditional official elites within the Loyalist camp — indeed, virtually all of the literary evidence of Loyalist views and activities come from this group — but their definition of "Loyalist" is sufficiently broad to encompass a substantial part of the population of the British colonies before 1775. Moreover, both scholars, but Brown in particular, argue that political allegiances did not necessarily reflect cultural differences or group solidarity, but were often the result of individual decisions which frequently sundered families and relationships, producing something most akin to a civil war.
5 Recent findings suggest an even greater complexity of motive and social origin. Employing the methodology of micro-studies, historians have demonstrated the persistence of Loyalist allegiances in a wide variety of colonial contexts.8 However, these local studies generally focus on communities in which there were armed conflicts involving Loyalists. Large neutral populations were generally found in these communities and both British and Rebel leaders devoted much of their time to persuading the general population of the rightness of their respective causes.9 There are no studies of the plight of passive Loyalists in areas such as New England, which was deemed Patriot territory following the British retreat from Boston in 1776. The socially homogeneous population of the relatively isolated province of New Hampshire ensured an easy victory for the Patriots and a simple transition to the new order. Nevertheless, recent Loyalist scholarship is characterized by the assumption that colonists were not necessarily instinctive rebels: the psychological process by which the known was replaced by the unthinkable was a long and often painful undertaking.
6 New Hampshire historiography after Hammond reflects some of these influences. As early as 1936 Richard Upton argued that the provincial Loyalists may have numbered several thousand.10 In his 1983 doctoral thesis on the Loyalist experience in New Hampshire, Robert Brown acknowledged that the Loyalists were a numerous breed, drawn from across a broad spectrum of the provincial population. His definition of Loyalist included most of those men who refused to sign the Association Test of 1776, a declaration that the signatories would lay down their lives to resist a British occupation of their countryside. This group probably represented several thousand people. Brown concludes that "hundreds of Loyalists remained in the province for the duration of the war, silently or not so silently accepting their fate".11 To the traditional categories of government, military, professional and commercial Loyalists, Brown adds a category which he calls psychological Loyalists. Using the terms coined by Claude Halstead Van Tyne and Leonard Labaree, Brown classified the Loyalists as officials, king worshippers, legality tories, religious tories, and those natural conservatives who, by their very disposition, were incapable of making an easy adjustment to change.12
7 Whether or not the New Hampshire Loyalists who participated in the Cape Ann Association and settled in New Brunswick were natural conservatives unable to adjust to the changes occurring in their society can never be more than a matter of opinion. It is, however, possible to examine those who refused to give unqualified support to the Revolution. The largest group of non-pacifist dissenters from the Association Test were found in the town of New Boston. The story of New Boston is the story of Irish settlement in New England. In 1718 a group of Ulster Presbyterian clergy organized a migration of people from their parishes to the New World. They were encouraged in this enterprise by Cotton Mather who envisioned the creation of a great Calvinist state in New England. Between 500 and 600 immigrants landed in Boston in the summer of 1718 under the leadership of the Rev. James MacGregor.13 Despite Mather’s support the migrants encountered considerable prejudice from the people of Boston, who feared the influx of large numbers of poor, diseased, unemployed Irish. Those fears were heightened as succeeding waves of Irish Presbyterians arrived each summer. In an effort to disperse them the government offered newcomers land in the more remote areas of the province. One group, headed by MacGregor, eventually moved to the middle Merrimack River area where they created the township of Londonderry, which quickly became the Irish centre of New Hampshire, an ethnic magnet that attracted both older settlers and new Ulster migrants. It contained 162 households in 1728.14 The original town was divided into three between 1740 and 1751.15 Even so, by 1767 the town bearing the original name contained 2,389 people, making it the second largest in New Hampshire, exceeded only by Portsmouth.16
8 Even these numbers do not reflect the impact of Irish migration on south-central New Hampshire before 1770. The Irish settlers were farmers. As their large families grew to adulthood they frequently by-passed the poorer remaining land of their natal townships for the virgin soil of new frontier towns. These movements could be characterized as extended swarmings from Londonderry. In the generation following 1737 they produced seven new Irish townships, including New Boston, created four predominately Irish towns in the neighbouring countryside, and founded the Irish Presbyterian settlements at Truro and Londonderry, Nova Scotia.17
9 By mid-century the middle Merrimack River region had become an Irish community. Its centre was Londonderry, which had replaced Boston as the focus of Irish identity in New England. By this time, as well, the Irish were by far the largest minority in New Hampshire. Since virtually all of the Presbyterians in the colony were Irish, the size and distribution of the community can most readily be measured in terms of the distribution of Presbyterian churches. In 1776 there were 15 Presbyterian churches in New Hampshire, compared with 84 Congregationalist.18 Organized into the Presbytery of Londonderry, the Presbyterians survived more easily than did Baptist, Quaker and Episcopal minorities because of the homogeneous townships in which they lived. In towns where a majority of voters were Presbyterian, public funds for the support of both church and school could be directed to Presbyterian purposes.
10 Distinctions between Yankee and Irish continued throughout the 18th century. Despite their common Calvinism there seems to have been little contact between Presbyterian and Congregationalist clergy, in part, perhaps, because all the Londonderry ministers were recruited in Ireland and were generally graduates of the University of Edinburgh. The main reasons for the distinctions seem to have been culturally based. The Irish were seen as clannish, and sometimes crude, by their Puritan hosts. Their group settlements and their tendency to intermarry seemed to confirm the charge of exclusivity. For their part, the Irish felt they were despised by their hosts. Their most recent historian has noted that the history of New Hampshire has generally been written by Puritan patriots about Puritan society and its accomplishments.19 In these accounts, the Irish existence has barely been recognized much less elucidated. Even the Rev. Edward Parker, writing the history of Londonderry more than a century after the settlement, felt it necessary to explain the differences which continued to separate the two communities. Native New England society, he thought, seemed more interested in literature and things of the mind, while Irish culture was more practical and concerned with basic issues of survival. On a more certain note, the Irish settlers practised a different agriculture from that of the New Englanders among whom they settled. The Irish farmers grew potatoes, flax and oats, made potato whiskey, fine linen cloth, oatmeal and oat bread, loved fast horses and maintained large herds of cattle and sheep. They introduced linen making and the potato to New England. The apocryphal story was told that when Irish settlers gave gifts of potatoes to the New Englanders, the latter disposed of the roots and cooked the stock. Successful linen and woollen industries emerged at Londonderry, where flax was grown both for local use and for export to the linen makers of Ireland. On the other hand the Irish did not eat pork and had no experience with pigs, the animals most common and most easily raised in New England. As late as 1742 only one Londonderry farmer in five kept a pig — and none kept more than one — while the typical farm had five cattle, two oxen, and a horse.20 Similarly, the Irish had no knowledge of corn (maize) cultivation and grew oats and wheat instead.21
11 The most obvious way in which the Irish community sustained its identity was through endogamy, a practice encouraged by the settlement patterns of the new arrivals. The Irish migrations were more in the nature of a clan movement than that of a family or a parish. Anecdotal evidence suggests that those few migrants who did not travel in the company of relatives usually joined relatives who had preceded them to the province; very frequently, after several years, settlers could number both paternal and maternal relatives among their kin in New Hampshire. More than 100 surnames were found among the Irish migrants, but about 40 repeatedly recur in each settlement, and reflect the relationships linking an extended ethnic family through the region.22 These included major clans, families so large that over a period of two generations they intermarried into most of the smaller families.23 This pattern of intermarriage, coupled with proximity of settlement, meant that the Irish community in the first and second generations tended to be highly integrated and tribal by nature. This tribalism was particularly important during the periodic swarmings which characterized the settlement pattern of the expanding community. What appeared to be a rational individual economic decision was generally made within the framework of the larger community and its effect was to re-create that community and its structure, values and habits in a new location. That Irish identity was reinforced throughout the 18th century by the periodic influx of Ulster Presbyterians, drawn to the townships by their reputation as Irish Presbyterian centres and by the skein of personal relationships which bound the Presbyterians of New Hampshire and Ulster.
12 All of these features characterized the settlement of New Boston. The township was granted in 1736 by the General Court of New Hampshire to 53 Boston men who acquired it on speculation. It remained unsettled until mid-century when Thomas Cochrane moved onto the tract as agent for the proprietors. Cochrane lived the Irish experience in New Hampshire from the settlement until the Revolution. Born in Ireland in 1703, he migrated with his parents to Nova Scotia, to Maine, and, in 1720, to Londonderry. He spent his early adult life there, acquired some rudimentary medical skills, married into the Adams clan, and finally, in 1748, moved to the New Boston tract where he would remain for the rest of his life.24 Over the next few years two dozen other settlers, most of them from the Londonderry area, took up New Boston farm lots. They included four of Cochrane’s own sons and relatives, as well as Allan and William Moor, Thomas and James Willson, and George Cristy. A few others, like John McAllister, migrated directly from Ireland to New Boston.25
13 When the proprietors took a census in 1756 there were 33 families occupying 29 houses, five cabins, one camp and one mill. The frontier condition of the settlement was reflected in its demographic structure: there were 27 adult males and only 10 adult females and 19 children.26 In the decade following 1756 the Londonderry presence in the settlement was augmented by the arrival of the Clarks, the McLaughlins, the McMillans, the McCallums, the Greggs, the Kelsos and the Campbells.
14 The material condition of the migrants and the family connections which bound them together suggest complex motives for the move to New Boston. They can be illustrated in the circumstances surrounding the arrival of William Moor and George Cristy, the founding members of two principal clans of the town. William Moor’s father died in 1741 leaving several minor children and an estate valued at £ 651.27 On his wife’s death the remaining estate was to be shared among four sons after £ 50 had been set aside for two unmarried daughters and £ 20 for his married daughter, Jean. As the youngest boy in the family, William’s prospects were not promising. Equally unpromising were the prospects for George Cristy. His father died in 1739 leaving an estate of £ 913, one third of which was left to his wife Jean, £ 80 to each of two older daughters, £ 1 each to two adult sons, and £ 50 each to his two minor children, George and Ann, when they reached the age of 12. The eldest son in the family, Thomas, received the bulk of the real estate.28 William Moor and George Cristy, then, were both young men of limited resources and prospects when they set off for New Boston about 1750. The move of the two to New Boston, however, was probably not accidental. William Moor’s sister, Jean — who had received £ 20 from her father — was also the widow Jean Cristy who was left the responsibility of raising her son George. It was uncle and nephew, then, of similar age, raised in the same area by widowed mothers, who settled in New Boston.
15 The pattern of chain migration became even more prevalent once the initial settlement had been established. George Cristy married Margaret Kelso of Londonderry, whose father had been one of the early Irish settlers in the province. Within a decade her brothers, William and Daniel, followed her to New Boston. William Kelso married a distant relative from Londonderry, and his young brother married John McAllister’s daughter, Mary, in New Boston. William’s eldest son, John, married Gizzel Patterson, the daughter of Robert Patterson, another of the later arriving Londonderry settlers. George Cristy’s nephew, Jesse — the son of his much older brother, Peter — followed his uncle to New Boston during the same period.
16 New Boston always contained a small number of families that cannot be clearly connected with Londonderry or Ireland. The largest of the non-Irish families in New Boston were the Livingstones. Robert Livingstone came from Boston, married Zediah Sargent of Malden, lived in Londonderry and came to New Boston after 1756 with a largely grown family. Two of his sons married into Irish families in Londonderry and three of his daughters married into Irish families in New Boston. Hannah married William Moor in 1761. Her sister Ann married Josiah Hitchings and the third sister, Margaret, married Josiah Patterson.
17 The settlers of New Boston prospered in their new environment. The virgin soils were rich and the hillsides of much of the town produced large returns of hay and clover. The town itself was astride the major pine forests of the region, and the masting trade provided a source of revenue to many farmers. From small beginnings at mid-century, lumber output grew steadily, reaching its zenith in 1820 when the town’s 25 sawmills produced more lumber than any other community in New Hampshire.29 The population grew rapidly. From 59 people in 1756 it reached 269 in 1767, 569 in 1775, and 1,202 in 1790. The shifting demographic pattern of the town reflected a trend to traditional family units and to stability. In the 11 years after 1756 the number of married women in the town increased from 11 to 47 and the proportion of children under 17 increased from 37 to 58 per cent of the population. The rapid population growth of the next three decades was largely the result of natural increase. Yet the town bore some marks of its recent settlement right through the period of the Revolution, notably a continuing shortage of adult females. In 1767 every women between the ages of 17 and 60 years was married. By comparison, nearly 40 per cent of men were unmarried. These gender differences blurred in time, but even as late as 1790 they had not entirely disappeared.30
18 The demographic growth of the community was paralleled by the creation of those civil and religious institutions which characterized the New Hampshire township. Twelve settlers gathered in 1762 and subscribed for the construction of a meeting house. The following year the town of New Boston was incorporated and the first annual election of selectmen to administer civic affairs was held.31 William Clark was appointed to the office of Justice of the Peace by the governor, and George Cristy held the commission as captain of militia. In 1767 the married men of the town gathered to call their first minister. The decision to call a Presbyterian was supported by 44 of the town’s 47 householders. The prosperity of the town and the confidence of the townsmen were reflected in their decision to subscribe a permanent annual salary of £40 to their pastor. The call was issued to the Rev. Solomon Moor, a native of Limavady, Ireland, and a graduate of the University of Glasgow. The ecclesiastical organization of the town was completed a short time after Moor’s induction, by the election and ordination of Thomas Cochrane, William Moor and Jesse Cristy to the office of ruling elders of the congregation.32 Moor’s induction, and the arrival of Dr. Jonathan Gove, the town’s physician, completed the complement of professional men who served the community before the Revolution. The structure and personnel of the community remained unchanged on the eve of the Revolution.
19 The American Revolution occurred quickly and easily in New Hampshire. British authorities were not prepared to commit forces to support the royal government of Benning Wentworth at Portsmouth. Even those New Hampshire residents sympathetic to the British cause opposed the Stamp Act and were appalled at the shelling of Falmouth by ships of the Royal Navy. Meanwhile, those committed to the Patriot cause moved quickly to secure control of the towns of the province. In the initial stages of the conflict they seemed to have the support of a majority of the influential people of the province in their demands for reform. As the conflict progressed the Patriots consolidated their position by resorting to the use of mobs and violence to intimidate Loyalists and silence any objections. Governor Wentworth fled Portsmouth in June 1775 and effective control of the province fell to the Provincial Congress and its republican leaders. Over the next four months the Congress conferred sweeping powers on the Committee of Public Safety, under the leadership of Meshech Weare. The following January, by a two to one vote, and over the vehement objections of the dissenting minority, the Congress adopted a new constitution. In the new republican order the government was vested in the Assembly and in a council appointed by the Assembly. When the Assembly was not sitting its authority was to be exercised by the Committee of Public Safety.33
20 Jere R. Daniell has argued that the New Hampshire Revolution succeeded quickly and painlessly because the royal authority did not extend beyond the first layer of government. After the governor’s removal the local structures were simply employed in the republican cause. If there were social or sectional winners and losers, the republican victory, he argues, can be seen as the triumph of the interests of Londonderry over Portsmouth, and of the Congregationalists and Presbyterians over the Anglicans.34
21 By early 1776 the republican revolution was complete; any person questioning that change was treated as a traitor, subject to arbitrary imprisonment, to the loss of all civil rights and, in some cases, to the confiscation of all property. The move against Loyalist dissidents within the colonies began shortly after the creation of the new state government. In an effort to determine who would and who would not support the new regime, the Committee of Public Safety proposed an oath or test which every white male over the age of 21 would be requested to sign. The Association Test was originally suggested by the Continental Congress. It required subscribers to pledge their lives and property in the effort to resist any British invasion. On 12 April 1776, the Committee distributed the oath to all towns in the province. Those who refused to sign were, with the exception of religious pacifists, labelled Loyalists.35 Upton and Brown have argued that this group probably does represent a fair reflection of Loyalist strength in the province by 1776; given the risks involved in refusing the oath it might be fairer to say that this number represented bedrock Loyalist support. Refusal alone was grounds for imprisonment and local Committees of Safety enthusiastically supported the central administration in bringing the dissidents to punishment. Of 9,348 potential signatories in the towns where the test was administered, 8,562 signed the loyalty oath.36 Of the 786 who refused to sign, 131, mostly Quakers, did so for religious reasons. When The New Hampshire Gazette argued that those who had refused to sign the oath should be left in peace, the view was considered a matter of public scandal by Patriots who felt that punishment, not toleration, was in order.37 A few non-jurors were found in most New Hampshire towns.38 Not surprisingly, the proportion of dissenters rose dramatically in towns where Loyalists believed they would not be subject to persecution. The non-jurors were not found in the Anglican centres of Portsmouth and Claremont, from which some had already fled, but in Richmond, New Boston, Rochester and Stratham. The largest concentrations were found in towns with significant numbers of Quakers. But the highest proportion of Loyalists in any town of New Hampshire was recorded in New Boston, where more than 40 per cent of adult males refused to sign the Association Test.39
Table One : Loyalist Strength in Selected New Hampshire Towns from the 1776 Association Test Results
Display large image of Table 1
22 The selectmen who received and administered the Association Test in New Boston were Ninian Clark and Daniel McAllister. After completing the rounds of townsmen they listed those who refused to sign, a list which included their own names as well as those of the provincial congressman, Dr Gove, deacons Cochrane, Cristy and Moor, Captain Cristy, and Justice Clark. As the Appendix illustrates, the major clans of the town split into three groups: those who supported the Revolution, those who were not prepared to defend it and those who split over the issue. Among the supporters were the Greggs, Dodges, Campbells, and Scobeys, and Yankee families like the Walkers and Woodburys. The largest clan, the Cochranes, was broken in half on the issue as were smaller families like the Boyds, Burns, Livingstones, Pattersons, McMillans, McNichols, McNeills and Willsons. Finally, the Cristys, Clarks, Donovans, Hunters, Kelsos, Moors, McFersons and Smiths opposed to a man.40 The earliest settlers were less likely to sign than those arriving after 1760, but non-jurors were plentiful among both. Age did not seem to be a factor. All of the leaders of the town refused to sign the Test with the exception of the Rev. Solomon Moor, who acquiesced to the demand of the Presbyterian Synod of New England which, meeting in Londonderry in September 1776, threatened to bar from the Synod any minister who refused to declare allegiance to the independent American states.41 The document was completed and forwarded to Exeter on 26 August 1776.
23 The Association Test destroyed the tranquility of New Boston. The effects of the debate were reflected in the results of local elections beginning in 1776. Dr Gove was replaced by Thomas Willson, a supporter of independence, as delegate to the second Provincial Congress in 1775. Willson, in turn, was replaced by Benjamin Dodge in 1776, and Dodge by Archibald McMillan in 1777. Both Dodge and McMillan had signed the Test. At the 1777 town meeting, four signatories to the Test, James Caldwell, Thomas Willson, Jacob Hooper and Lieutenant William Livingstone, became selectmen. The only office to which a non-juror was elected was that of town clerk, but even here the long time town clerk, William Clark, was replaced by John Cochrane. The town also created a Committee of Safety which included Nehemiah Dodge and Robert Hogg. Not a single signatory to the Test had held the office of selectman before 1777 and not a single non-juror was elected to the office between 1777 and 1781.42
24 The Association Test was just the first of a series of political acts designed to destroy any effective opposition to the new order. Legal proscriptions against Loyalists were created in 1777 and 1778. On 17 January 1777, the Legislature offered Loyalists the opportunity to sell their property and leave the province within 90 days. The same act made aiding the enemy a capital offence, and speaking against the common cause or discouraging enlistments in the army and navy punishable by fines or imprisonment. In June the Legislature conferred on the Committee of Safety the power to imprison any suspects and hold them without term and without trial or bail. This act further granted the Committee full jurisdiction in the trial of Loyalists with authority to do whatever the Committee "may judge necessary for the public good". On 19 July militia colonels were given authority to disarm all Loyalists and confiscate their weapons. Four months later Loyalists were forbidden to transfer the ownership of their property before leaving the province. On 19 November 1778, 76 Loyalists who had left the province were proscribed and forbidden to enter the province without permission, as were all others who should leave the province in the future. The following week, under a new Confiscation Act, the property of those Loyalists who actively participated in British activities to secure control of the American colonies was made subject to confiscation.43
25 The instrument for saving the new political order from its critics and internal enemies was the Committee of Public Safety. Throughout the conflict the central Committee and its numerous local offspring received information from many individuals informing on the thoughts, writings, speeches or activities, real or presumed, of many other individuals. The authority of the central Committee was arbitrary, unrestrained by any consideration of due process or civil liberty. Individuals brought to the attention of the Committee had no right to meet their accusers or even to know the nature of the evidence against them. They were summoned to appear before the Committee to answer charges. If the Committee so chose, the individual could be placed in prison for months or years — the costs being borne by the prisoner — without ever being brought to trial. Between 1776 and 1782, this instrument was employed against a number of New Boston non-jurors and their relatives in Londonderry.
26 The most famous case involved an attempt to indict the Rev. Solomon Moor for sedition and remove him from his pastoral charge. On 28 August 1778 Moor was ordered to appear before the Committee of Safety in Exeter to answer charges made against him. These were contained in a petition initiated by Archibald McMillan, William Livingstone and Solomon Dodge. The petition contained depositions from five other New Boston men charging their minister with sedition and disloyalty.44 All eight complainants were either congressmen, selectmen, or members of the New Boston Committee of Safety. In his deposition Jacob Hooper stated that Moor never publicly prayed for the success of the Union. James Caldwell accused the minister of discouraging him from going into the war, " by telling me he did not see how we could prosper there was so much wickedness in our army".45 Moreover, Moor is supposed to have said, it would be more useful if he stayed at home and worked the farm, for otherwise there would not be a mouthful of provisions in the town by the end of June. John Smith swore that in September 1776 Moor preached on Romans 13 that rebellion against higher powers was a damning sin, and called on rebels to repent. Daniel McMillan declared that in February 1777, Moor had stated that he thought it a piece of impudence for the colonists to burn the king’s ship. In his deposition, Robert Hogg declared that when he had asked Moor to pray for those who went out of the town to serve in the patriot cause the minister had responded that the colonists had acted so badly in burning the king’s ship and destroying the tea that he could not pray for them. What could a man do, he asked, when it was against his conscience? The three petitioners built upon the themes raised in the depositions.46 Since the minister appeared to be a "non friend" of "our country", they asked that the Committee remove him from his charge.
27 This petition and the scheduled hearing before the Committee prompted an immediate response within New Boston. A counter petition, prepared on 31 August, condemned the original petitioners "...for their spirit of contention and animosity, which has long subsisted in the minds of some of the petitioners against our Reverend Pastor...they have endeavoured to accuse him of heresy, but have failed in their attempts...we are knowing to his being Steadily and Constantly at home in his own business...".47 The accusation of heresy stemmed from Moor’s reputed sympathy for Arminianism, but his supporters were careful not to deal with the substance of the loyalty charges against him. The counter petition was signed by 30 household heads in the town, all but five of whom were non-jurors (see Appendix). The list included the three deacons, most of the pre-1777 civic leaders, and the heads of the McAllister, Kelso, Moor, Cristy, Cochrane, McFerson, Clark, Willson, McNeill, Livingstone and Boyd clans. With a few exceptions it did not include the names of the younger members of these families, although it was likely the elders spoke for the whole family. These would be the names recognized outside the community without committing the younger generation to an irrevocable act of support for a person whose loyalty had been questioned. In the event, the Committee of Public Safety did not move against Moor.
28 The reasons for this decision can only be speculated on. Moor was a dedicated and respected pastor; the small number of petitioners calling for his removal suggests that some moderate republicans were reluctant to take this step. While many instances of his Loyalist sympathies were enumerated in the petition, there was no accusation that he had prayed for the king or celebrated British victories. Then, too, he had signed the Test in 1776. Moreover, the leader of the Revolutionary party in the Presbyterian Synod of New England was the principal minister in Londonderry whose influence had been so effective in securing Synod support. In the end the Committee simply let sleeping dogs lie.
29 Other New Boston Loyalists did not have the advantages of Solomon Moor. In June 1777, John O’Neill of Londonderry charged Dr Gove and Captain Cristy with treason and disrespect to the American army on the basis of comments they had made in letters sent to a friend serving in the Continental Army.48 The Committee apparently did not act on these charges. Events had already overtaken Dr Gove. An armed mob from Massachusetts entered New Boston, invaded Gove’s house, and seized a man suspected of sedition. Gove himself was arrested by the New Hampshire Committee on charges of conspiracy and counterfeiting and committed to the Exeter gaol where he was held for more than a year without hearing or trial. Finally, he was released on 10 June 1778, after Dr Henry Codman of Amherst and James Dickey of Hollis each provided Weare with bonds of £1,000 guaranteeing that Gove would remain within Hillsborough County.49 Gove was the most persecuted of the New Boston loyalists, but others suffered similar fates. John McLaughlin was gaoled for "safekeeping". He was, "...suddenly and unexpectedly apprehended", while in Boston in 1777, confined then released from gaol, arrested again in October 1778, confined in Exeter gaol for nearly six months without trial, and finally released on 9 April 1779 with two sureties of £ 500 each.50 A similar fate befell Jesse Cristy, son of Deacon Cristy. He had gone to work at Penobscot and, while crossing the bay to Halifax, was captured and eventually transported to Boston. His family persuaded Governor Hancock to release him and he returned to New Boston. Shortly afterward, in December of 1782, a party of men seized him in his home and brought him to Exeter gaol where, by order of the Committee of Safety, he remained for nearly six months, charged with going over to the enemy and returning to the state without permission. He was only finally released on the cessation of hostilities in April 1783.51
30 Similar treatment was accorded to non-jurors in Londonderry who were kinsmen and associates of the New Boston non-jurors. In June 1777, Lieutenant John Clark was accused by John Hopkins and John Aiken, the chairman of the Londonderry Committee of Safety. Hopkins testified that Clark had declared he would not take the oath except to save his life, had condemned Hancock and Adams, had admitted he had connections with the Regulars and had further declared he would join the regulars were it not for his wife and children. Hopkins also implicated Dr Gove in the same testimony. The Londonderry Committee sent Clark to Exeter gaol where he remained until parolled to his farm a few days later.52 John Moor was charged with assisting the escape of Londonderry’s most famous tory, Colonel Stephen Holland, and sent to Exeter gaol. He was released but later gaoled again for challenging colonial authority, and finally released on 6 January 1779 when John Holms and Samuel Dodge posted £ 1,000 bond for his good behaviour. He was confined to Londonderry for a period of one year.53 Another consort of Holland’s was William Vance. Vance was imprisoned by the Londonderry Committee in 1777, held in the Exeter gaol for eight months without trial, and then confined to his farm for another year. After repeated requests for release had failed, he broke bond and fled to the British lines. His farm was seized by the Committee of Safety in September of 1779. When he attempted to return to Londonderry in December of 1783, he was arrested under the terms of the 1778 New Hampshire banishment act.54
31 The position of those with known British sympathies remained tenuous following the peace of 1783. It was not at all clear that victorious republicans would be generous to those whose support for the Revolutionary cause had extended no further than a studied neutrality. Sovereignty and independence did not produce the tranquility, prosperity and happiness which had been anticipated. Commercial collapse began in the interior of the province in 1781 as the needs of the war effort declined following the victory at Yorktown. Demand for agricultural produce fell at the same time that creditors demanded the repayment of farmers’ debts and calls for greater fiscal responsibility were heard in the halls of the Legislature. The resulting popular discontent focussed on the new democratic institutions of the state and on the men who exercised political power. Countrymen discovered that their political masters seemed more willing to listen to the views of the Portsmouth merchants than to those of land rich agrarian debtors. Indeed, after exercising authority without challenge for nearly a decade, many politicians had begun to exhibit the kind of grace and favour behaviour which had characterized their predecessors of the colonial period. The economic crisis, growing tensions between creditor and debtor classes and the increasing criticism of the new state raised serious questions about the wisdom of the great American experiment in popular democracy. The crisis intensified through to 1786. In that year the passage of a law to permit British subjects to collect lawful debts from New Hampshire debtors provoked a march of the discontented on Exeter. They were finally dispersed by a regiment of militia. Dissatisfied with solutions proposed by politicians, all groups, as Jere Daniell has noted, " ...deplored civil disorder and...had lost faith in the ability of the government to protect the general public welfare".55
32 The formation of the Cape Ann Association must be seen in this context. The creation of a Loyalist homeland in Nova Scotia occurred rapidly in 1783-84, spurred by the twin imperatives to evacuate New York and provide a haven for those who had stood by the crown in the crisis. The creation of New Brunswick in 1784 was a further attempt to offer the Loyalists a place of refuge free from the constraints of an existing European population.56 The architect of the new province was William Knox, the former under-secretary for American affairs. Knox envisioned a royal province enjoying the stability offered by the British constitution, the prosperity afforded by British commercial policies and the moral authority offered by an established episcopal church. Such a province, he argued, would become a magnet, drawing thousands of royalists out of the now independent southern colonies.57 The myth of the loyal British subject living in the American States who would seek a British homeland at the first opportunity remained a compelling element in British colonial policy throughout the rest of the 18th century.58
33 The Cape Ann Association was the first fruit of this policy. Formed in 1784, the Association consisted of 224 mostly male heads of family under the leadership of William Clark.59 The fact that they received their grants a year following the end of the Revolution has been taken as a prima facie case that they were not Loyalists. The question of whether or not they were must rest on the evidence of their beliefs and activities during the Revolution. For that reason it is essential, first, to identify the associates. Most seem to have lived in or around the Merrimack River valley of New Hampshire and on the coastal acres of northern Massachusetts. There were two distinct groups of petitioners. The most prominent names were those of the coastal Massachusetts men, some of whom apparently had connections with the Penobcost Association Loyalists who had settled at St. Andrews.60 This group included Francis Norwood from Cape Ann, who had fished the Passamaquoddy Bay, and Jesse Saville, who had been an officer of the British customs at Gloucester.61
34 The largest part of the Cape Ann associates was made up of New Hampshiremen. Almost half of all petitioners can be identified as men who refused to sign the 1776 Association Test or as sons of those men, including a number of proscribed tories. There were single non-jurors from six towns. Groups of two to five — usually members of extended families — were found in another seven.62 The major concentration was found in the middle Merrimack area of Rockingham and Hillsborough counties in territory which had been the heartland of the Revolutionary cause. Here most associates were found in Londonderry, New Boston and Amherst, the town then adjoining New Boston. Londonderry and Amherst each had about 15; New Boston had 42. The Amherst group included extended families of Kendalls, Reeds, Townes and Westons, as well as Samuel Dodge Jr and Ananias McAllister. At Londonderry more than half of the 1776 non-jurors petitioned for land in a British colony and these included the Humphreys, the Reeds, the Moors, the Morrisons and the Holms, as well as William Vance. In addition, most of the political prisoners who had shared the Exeter gaol with Jonathan Gove were among the petitioners.
35 The largest group of asssociates was from New Boston. Not only did the town contribute nearly 20 per cent of all Cape Ann petitioners, but the leader of the Association, William Clark, was among their number. It was Clark, the New Boston farmer-surveyor-selectman-town clerk-non-juror, who headed the organization, and who finally surveyed the newly granted lots in New Brunswick. The other New Boston petitioners included all of the prominent non-jurors: Deacon Cristy, Deacon Moor — Deacon Cochrane was dead by 1784 — Captain Cristy, Dr Gove, the Kelsos, the McAllisters, the McLaughlins, the McFersons, the Willsons, the Doaks and the Clarks — 23 non-jurors and 11 now-adult sons of non-jurors. In addition, there were three families of Clindinnins who had not been present for the 1776 Test. New Boston, too, is the place where the question of whether the Cape Ann petitioners had held consistent views on the subject of the crown may most easily be tested. There were 62 signatories to the 1776 Test in New Boston and 47 who had refused. Of the non-jurors still living in New Boston in 1784, 23 asked for land which would enable them to move to a British colony. On the other hand, only three signatories of the Test — Josiah Hitchings, William Blair and Alexander Patterson — were found in the ranks of the Cape Ann Association. Josiah Hitchings’ late conversion to the Loyalist cause may, at least in part, be explained by the influence of his wife. Hitchings had married Ann Livingstone, the sister of Deacon Moor’s wife Hannah, who was a passionate Loyalist.63 Hitchings’ adult sons seem to have been influenced by their mother’s sympathies and were also found among the Cape Ann petitioners.
36 In the autumn of 1784, His Majesty’s Council for New Brunswick granted the prayer of the Cape Ann petitioners and offered the associates 22,600 acres of land in the Wentworth Plantation, located in the middle watershed of the St. Croix River basin in what would become St David Parish. The following Spring the migration from New Boston began. It was led by Clark and by Deacon Moor, who brought his entire extended family to the St. Croix. They were accompanied by the families of the sons of Deacon Jesse and Captain George Cristy, by the sons of Deacon Cochrane, by the Kelsos, the McAllisters, the McFersons, the Smiths, the Clindinnins, the McLaughlins, the Hitchings and by William Vance. The New Boston-Londonderry settlers comprised most of the actual Cape Ann settlement. The great majority of Cape Ann grantees neither settled their grants nor fulfilled the conditions of their patents. In 1790 the exasperated members of His Majesty’s Council for New Brunswick escheated all but 47 lots in the grant.64
37 In the absence of detailed tax records it is difficult to follow the sometimes complex movements of the Cape Ann arrivals after 1785. By 1797, however, when the escheated lots were regranted, there were 76 grantees on the Cape Ann lands, somewhat more than half of whom were from New Boston. The existing families had been supplemented by the Connicks, a New Boston family with kin among the Cape Ann settlers. William Moor and Peter Cristy had become successful lumbermen. The remaining settlers, in characteristic frontier fashion, worked their farm lots, made timber and children, and sometimes moved to new locations when other opportunities presented themselves.
38 The public record is silent on the reasons why a large part of the citizenry of New Boston chose to abandon their new found freedom in the state of New Hampshire in 1785 and instead placed themselves in the bondage of their former British oppressors. New Boston commentators were obviously embarrassed by this exodus. Writing 80 years after the fact, and in the midst of another great civil strife, the patriotic historian of New Boston, in an oblique reference in the appendix of his work, grudgingly conceded that a few people in New Boston had not supported the Revolution ("Inducements were held out to those in the States who had not sympathized with the revolutionary movement to settle there, and these men availed themselves of the flattering though partially deceitful proffers").65 A residual loyalty, some passion over the issue of what was lost, a growing pessimism over the prospects for the great American experiment, and the wish to have a life boat in the offing may have played a part in the individual decisions to join the Cape Ann enterprise. The argument that the move was the result of land shortages in New Boston seems untenable: New Boston was still in the first generation of settlement; its agricultural base continued to expand for another 30 years. A phenomenon like the earlier Londonderry swarmings seems premature in New Boston of this period, and in any event much closer land was available in Vermont, northern New York, and on the Maine frontier of Massachusetts. More important, given the bitterness of the recent Revolution, the move to British territory was decidedly an unfriendly act which might well merit some penalty in New Hampshire. For the New Brunswick land was not for speculation. Title could be confirmed only once certain settlement conditions had been fulfilled. Earlier Loyalist refugees often had no choice: they received grants of land and had to settle on them. The St. Ann petitioners were not refugees; their movement into the colder northern wilderness was one of free choice.
39 Why did they move to New Brunswick? Several facts in this case are obvious; taken together they present an interesting, if not entirely original, perspective on the American Revolution, on those who lived in communities unaffected directly by it, and on those historians who wrote about them.
40 A large part of the population of New Boston did not support the Revolution. The views of this group remained fairly consistent over the course of the decade extending from the Association Test to the creation of the Cape Ann Association. They included most of the community leadership. In their attitudes toward the events of the early Revolutionary period the slight evidence available suggests they were Whigs whose views were not fundamentally different from those of their Revolutionary Whig neighbours. Certainly they were not king and church tories! Indeed, the most perplexing factor in the New Boston case is that they fitted all the categories that should have been active Revolutionaries: they were Irish Presbyterians, cloth makers and farmers, living in New England. Moreover, Londonderry, their mother colony and religious centre, was a centre of the Revolution.
41 It is clear that tribalism was an important element both in creating a climate of opinion and binding together a community. Most of the Cape Ann settlers were related by blood. It is probable that a handful of family members set the path followed by the rest. Yet, in the main, even the opinion setters were not prepared to act in support of the Imperial government, although they were not brought to the test on this since British forces never actually entered New Hampshire. Since they neither wrote learned discourses nor engaged in public debate on the issues of their time, it is necessary to infer from their public actions where their sympathies lay. These suggest that they did not adhere to any profound political theory, but appreciated the stability and justice inherent in an imperfect system which was familiar, which worked most of the time and which had emerged from a long experience. It is quite likely that they did not understand the arguments of the boisterous proponents of the radical wing of the Revolution, and if they did they probably greeted these Enlightenment views of the nature of man and society with scepticism. Their relationship with society was always formulated in terms of personalities not ideas. The Revolutionists spoke of rights and sovereignty, but their treatment of dissidents belied the talk. British rule in New Hampshire, under the benign Wentworth regimes, may have been corrupt and self-serving — it was never tyrannical.
42 The ambiguity of the leaders of the New Boston Loyalists is reflected in their relationships with the other half of the town and with the new government of New Hampshire. While they probably preferred the assurance of a British administration, they saw the economy of the state in terms of their own lives and the lives and prosperity of their families and their town. Ensuring prosperity was the purpose of the state and if they could prosper in New Hampshire they would live with whatever system prevailed. Apart from Deacon Moor, the senior members of the Loyalist community remained in New Boston; it was their children and their children’s children whom they sent out to create the new world in a safe British haven, a new world which could, if necessary, be made available to the rest of the extended family members. Deacon Cristy and Captain Cristy died in New Boston, far from most of their children in New Boston-on-the-St Croix. Dr Gove sent no sons to New Brunswick and continued to represent New Boston in the New Hampshire House of Assembly until 1792, yet at the same time he was one of the minority of Cape Ann grantees who met the settlement requirements and continued to hold his lot until the end of the century. The Rev. Solomon Moor was able to overcome his considerable theological reservations about the right of rebellion and to continue to function, however uncomfortably, in the new constitutional order for the rest of his life. The younger generation of New Boston Loyalists, whose opinions had obviously never been central to the discussion, continued to live comfortably in both worlds and moved easily between them. While they considered themselves British subjects, they rarely manifested the bitterness towards the new republic that often coloured the views of the professional Loyalists who dominated the public service of the new British province. In terms of social and economic origins, New Boston Loyalists were certainly more characteristic of New Brunswick Loyalists than were the tories who sat in council and court in Saint John and Fredericton.66
43 Most of the difficulties in identifying the New Hampshire Loyalists stem from the question of definition. From the British side, Loyalists were originally self-defined by the first refugees in the Loyalist colonies who wanted to distinguish themselves from all who came after them. They were assisted in this effort by early American amateur historians who wanted to demonstrate the patriotic unanimity of their communities. In many communities such as New Boston the Revolution became a morality play depicting the struggle between good and evil. Those who challenged the Revolution were tories. Tories were bad. Occasional doubters had conversion experiences and were saved, but the Revolution was the expression of the community as a whole. Ultimately the tories — those who were not true Americans — showed their colours and fled in defeat and dishonour. Loyalism, then, by common consent of the victor and the vanquished, was restricted to the refugees and the Loyalist military, a conclusion which principal sources of the movement, such as the Loyalist Claims Commission records, only reinforced.
44 The New Boston experience bears testament to the complexity and persistence of the Loyalist tradition in 18th century British America and to the ways in which the definitions and pre-conceptions of historians limit the questions which they address and the sources which they use. It also raises questions concerning the post-Loyalist migration to Upper Canada. Generations of students have been taught the distinction between the United Empire Loyalists and the much larger body of later arriving avaricious New Englanders and New Yorkers whose motive in coming was a grant of free land. Perhaps this is true, but it was also said of the Cape Ann Association and of the Loyalists of New Boston.
Appendix : Public Statements of New Boston Settlers
YES: Signed the Association Test 1776NO: Non-juror. Refused to sign the Association Test
LON: Migrated from Londonderry to New Boston
56: Present in New Boston in 1756
OFF: Held public office in New Boston
1. Before 1777
2. 1777 to 1782
CALL: Signed the call to Rev. Moor
MOY: Signed petition defending Moor’s loyalty
MON: Accused Moor of disloyalty
ANN: Member of Cape Ann Association 1784
NB: Number of families that migrated to New Brunswick 1785
Public Statements of New Boston Settlers
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Public Statements of New Boston Settlers
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Public Statements of New Boston Settlers
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Public Statements of New Boston Settlers
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Londonberry Non-Jurors (1776) / Londonberry Cape Ann Associates (1784)
Notes