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About Us |
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If you have ventured into this section of the site, we assume you might be a little curious about who we are and how all this came about, so let us introduce ourselves. The internet has something of a dubious reputation, to say the least, when it comes to meeting people. Had our mothers known, we're quite sure they would have warned us… Even so, there are a lot of good things that happen as a result of "cyber-friendships," and we like to think this project is one of them. You see, we have never met in the more traditional sense, even though we keep threatening to change that one of these days! Our acquaintance began as a collaboration on a series of talks on the Loyalist military for the Golden Gates Genealogy Forum on America On-Line, turned into an on-line friendship, and has now come full circle back to another, more elaborate sort of collaboration….this website, which has been almost 10 months in the making. And we're even still speaking to one another…..nicely! So without further ado….
Todd W. Braisted
I had been (and continue to be) a lifelong resident of Bergen County, New Jersey, and had read of all the history that had taken place in my neighborhood. A good part of that history involved the Loyalists, particularly those who served and fought in the 4th Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers, a regiment raised right here in Bergen County. Not enjoying my experience on the Congressional Forces side of things, I left their service forever in 1977 and helped found the NJV. I've been here ever since. My interest in research began in 1979. We wished to upgrade our clothing for the reenactment unit, to make ourselves as authentic as possible with an eye towards joining the Brigade of the American Revolution. The unit needed someone to sew and someone to research. I couldn't sew (luckily my cousin Steve could), but I found I loved to research. Books just didn't have the sort of information we needed. This inevitably lead us to the sources in archives and manuscript repositories, which indeed did have what we were looking for. Over the next few years, with the guidance of such noted historians as Don Londahl-Smidt, I expanded my interests to all of the Loyalist military corps and the war as a whole. I started frequenting every local research library with lengthier trips to anything within driving distance, including Washington, Ottawa and Ann Arbor. The PRO visits admittedly needed a plane… The internet is a new challenge, and one with almost unlimited potential. After spending many an evening replying to query after query concerning folk's ancestors or people seeking research tips, I decided the time had come to try to focus and organize all these things. I wanted to give people a centralized place to learn some research tips, find out a little more about the war and Loyalist participation, and perhaps even find their ancestors. Not knowing anything about web site construction (how a series of zero's and one's translate into a portrait of Beverly Robinson is beyond me…), I turned to Nan Cole, who I had come to know through the America On-line weekly Loyalist chats, and who very graciously volunteered to assist. We started this process in April of 1999, and here we are today. It has been a massive effort and will continue to be one for some time. But it has proved very enjoyable and I trust it will be worthwhile to our visitors. Thanks to Nan, this web site exists. I have no clue about website construction or anything of the sort, but she took to the project with zeal and energy and I think she's done a great job! One of the fun things I have found during these years of research is my own Loyalist ancestry. The Braisted family settled on Staten Island in the late 1640's, part of the Dutch settlement of New Netherlands. During the time of the American Revolution, no fewer than three Braisteds were Loyalists. John Braisted served in the 3rd Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers from January, 1778 till the end of the war, Peter Braisted served in the Staten Island (Richmond County) Militia and was seriously wounded in 1779, and Simon Braisted took the oath of allegiance to the British in New York City in 1777 and probably served in the militia there. As far as I know, they all stayed in America at the end of the war. In my opinion, that doesn't make them any less Loyalists than anyone else. And that's part of the point of this web site: this is where you will find information on all the Loyalists, not just the ones who survived the war intact and settled here and there, but all those who served the British somehow: overtly and covertly, briefly, lengthy, well and poorly. Not everyone was a hero. And not everyone was a villain. For the most part they were just average people living in extraordinary times, trying to live as they saw fit. Okay, I've preached enough here! Enjoy the rest of the site. If you want to find out more about me, please refer to my research resume. Thanks all for visiting!
Todd W. Braisted Click here for ---> Top of Page
Nan Cole
When my father died some years ago, I was fortunate enough to inherit a number of 19th Century photographs and papers from that side of my family. For several years, they sat in a storage box, unused and unread. One day, I decided to pull them out and go through them, and as I sat pouring over them, I found that I was captivated by the lives of these people who had lived so very long ago and the stories implied by the bits and fragments of the papers that had survived them. And so, I took up the rather addictive hobby of genealogy. Almost as soon as I began to research, I began to run into the term "Loyalist," but it took me a couple of months to figure out what that meant and to piece together enough information to conclude that it was relevant to my family. At least when I was of school age, you didn't learn about the Loyalists from your high school American History classes! As it turns out, three of my direct ancestors (that I know of so far, at least) were Loyalists, and there are times when I feel as though I am related through marriage to half the population of Upper Canada from the late 18th and early 19th Centuries! My 4th great-grandfather, John Depew/Depue, Sr. served in the Indian Department, and his son, Charles, my 3rd great-grandfather, and another of my 4th great-grandfathers, Michael Showers, served in Butler's Rangers. Another 3rd great-grandfather, Henry Hannon, Sr., is reputed to have served in the British Navy during the American Revolution, although that remains to be proven.
With the possible exception of the first few months, genealogy has never been about names, dates and places to me. Those things are critical, of course, but genealogy is about history, and without it, names, dates and places are barren and almost meaningless. Much of history is fascinating, especially if it involves your own family, but I find the history of the Loyalists to be especially poignant. These unfortunate souls chose to take up arms against their own neighbors, some for noble reasons and some for less than noble reasons and some straddling the fence for all they were worth. They were persecuted and vilified, and they fought and bled and often died, sometimes in conflict with members of their own families…fathers against sons and brothers against brothers. The women, many of them wives and mothers, were often left to fend for themselves in hostile surroundings, and many became refugees, fleeing into the British lines, sometimes with enough young children in tow to field a baseball team. They struggled through an extraordinary time in history, they endured, and fortunately for many of us, they procreated, only to be all but forgotten in their native country. On the few occasions they are not forgotten, which is every once in a while in the movies, there is a tendency for them to be portrayed inaccurately as pompous, bumbling caricatures. At any rate, one thing lead to another, and several years ago I wound up hosting a Loyalist genealogy chat for the Golden Gates Genealogy Forum on America On-line, and more recently, a Canadian genealogy SIG for the Newberry Library's Friends of Genealogy in Chicago. Through these activities, I have had the great pleasure to become acquainted with many of you who are researching your own Loyalist ancestors and to begin a collaboration with Todd, who became both a friend and a mentor, as my interest began to expand from my own genealogy to include Loyalist history in general, and who has very graciously shared so much of his time and knowledge and research with me. I am one of those people who always has to have a project in the works, and starting this website has been a very fun experience for me. A computer guru I'm not, and when we started this, I had never seen a line of HTML code in my life, but I looked around at all the other people who were building websites left and right, and thought, "How hard can this be?" (I now have a pretty good idea…) We have tried to keep it simple and straightforward…no fancy whirling, dripping graphics and no pyrotechnics. In part, that's because I couldn't learn to do all those things and get all this material on-line at the same time, and in part, it's because we wanted to be sure that almost everyone, regardless of whether or not they have the latest and greatest computer technology, can access it without a lot of difficulty. What's next? Why, we are going to continue to expand this site, of course! And I'm going to get back to my genealogy and also delve a little further into primary research of the Loyalists. And….okay, I admit it….now I've learned enough about this that I do want to learn to code in Perl and JavaScript and do fancy things… ;-) Enjoy!
Warmest regards,
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The On-Line Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies
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Loyalist research and living history have been my passions for over twenty years. In 1976, at the advanced age of twelve, I became thoroughly caught up in our nation's Bicentennial. Switching from little league to reenacting, I proudly marched off in a Continental Artillery unit, taking part in all the events around New York City.
An interest in Loyalist history, which started for Todd as an interest in Living History, started for me as an interest in my family's history. Growing up, I knew that my paternal grandfather Shaw had come to the United States from Canada as a young man, and I recall hearing stories from my aunts about the family being "early settlers" there.
