Among the Loyalists who were transported to the shores of New Brunswick by the British after their defeat by revolutionary Americans were several hundred African Americans. Like their counterparts who went to what is now Nova Scotia, among this group were formerly enslaved men, women and children who had been granted their freedom in exchange for joining the British side during the revolutionary war. In the colony that soon became New Brunswick, slavery was still legal. Many African American Loyalists had to become indentured labourers to survive in this new situation. Many others took up the opportunity offered them in 1791 to move yet again, this time to Sierra Leone in Africa where many Black Loyalists established a new colony on the coast of Africa where they lived free of slavery. The stories of New Brunswicks Black Loyalists are captured in the brief biographies of eight individuals—men, women and youths—presented by author Stephen Davidson. Through their experiences a picture emerges of the narrow limits to the freedom which the Black Loyalists were able to experience in a predominantly white and highly racist colony.

This book chronicles experiences of African Americans who were part of the influx of Loyalist refugees from the American Revolution. The Black Loyalists were both freed and enslaved Black Americans who had joined the British side. For their loyalty, they were evacuated by the British Navy to Nova Scotia, where they were to receive freedom, land, and provisions. The Black Loyalists landed at a settlement named Birchtown, adjoining the white Loyalist town of Shelburne. On arrival they found virtually no shelter. Many died and others only survived by digging small holes in the ground and fixing logs over top for makeshift huts. Food was extremely scarce. White Loyalists quickly received their land and provisions. It was years before the Black Loyalists received their land grants, and not everyone got a plot. The lands provided proved to be rocky and hard to cultivate. Ultimately many Black Loyalists chose to leave Nova Scotia to go to Sierra Leone, West Africa, founding a new settlement there. Others remained, and their descendants are found in communities across Nova Scotia and beyond. Through images, artifacts, and text, this book tells the story of Birchtown and its residents as well as the larger story of Black Loyalist history, reflecting the research and exhibits in the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre in Birchtown.

A children's book about Nova Scotia's Black settlement of Birchtown.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER This groundbreaking book offers the first global history of the loyalist exodus to Canada, the Caribbean, Sierra Leone, India, and beyond. At the end of the American Revolution, sixty thousand Americans loyal to the British cause fled the United States and became refugees throughout the British Empire. Liberty’s Exiles tells their story. This surprising new account of the founding of the United States and the shaping of the post-revolutionary world traces extraordinary journeys like the one of Elizabeth Johnston, a young mother from Georgia, who led her growing family to Britain, Jamaica, and Canada, questing for a home; black loyalists such as David George, who escaped from slavery in Virginia and went on to found Baptist congregations in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone; and Mohawk Indian leader Joseph Brant, who tried to find autonomy for his people in Ontario. Ambitious, original, and personality-filled, this book is at once an intimate narrative history and a provocative analysis that changes how we see the revolution’s “losers” and their legacies.

Many Canadians believe their nation fell on the right side of history in harbouring black slaves from the United States. In fact, in the wake of the American Revolution, Loyalist families brought slaves with them to settle in the Maritime colonies of British North America. The transition from slavery in the American colonies to slavery in the Maritimes required slaves to use their traditions of survival, resistance, and kinship networks to negotiate their new reality. While some local judges chipped away at slavery, Maritime slaves fought against the institution of slavery by refusing to work, by running away, by reconstituting their families, and by challenging their owners in court. Harvey Amani Whitfield’s book, the first on slavery in the Maritimes, is a startling corrective to the enduring and triumphant narrative of Canada as a land of freedom at the end of the Underground Railroad.

The Loyalists were colonial Americans who supported the British empire and opposed independence during the long revolutionary war. When the American Revolution ended in a peace treaty that was too feeble to protect them against persecution in the newly independent United States, tens of thousands fl ed to a new life in exile. In 1783 many of them sailed northward from the New York City area to the St. John River valley in the future Canadian province of New Brunswick. This volume makes available for the fi rst time the source materials documenting this vast migration. Most records were discovered at the National Archives of the United Kingdom. In this book you can follow thousands of loyal American refugees at one or more critical points in their journey of exile: on registering their names at New York to take part in the exoduson boarding a ship for the voyage northwardon drawing provisions from the army commissariat at St. John Harbour after arrivalas recipients of town lots in the future city of Saint Johnas participants in the political turmoil that overtook the American Loyalists in exile This rich resource will be treasured by both family historians and those interested in New Brunswicks colourful past.