We would like to thank everyone who has visited us, left us messages in the guestbook or posted a note on our message boards. We are still working our way through the hundreds of e-mails that we have received, and it has been a wonderful experience getting to know so many of you and finding out about your quests for information. We look forward to working with you in the future and hopefully finding a piece of research or two together.
Both of us took off from work to monitor our opening day and handle any glitches that occurred. All in all, it didn't go all that badly. We had almost 3,000 visitors in the first 24 hours and the site only went down once for maybe ninety seconds.
We also tested the limits of our e-mail account, and we found out (the hard way) how many we could handle at one time. When none were received for a 45-minute period at the start of lunchtime on the east coast, we realized something had gone awry. Some frantic transferring of messages quickly ensued and we were back up and running in no time.
We had a winner in our contest! Our thanks to everyone who entered! T. Murray Girt of Welland, Ontario was the closest entry with a guess of 240 and has received a copy of Christopher Moore's The Loyalists. T. Murray is a descendant of the McCay and Burkholder families of Ontario.
What's New
When we launched our site a little over three weeks ago, we did so with the promise that we would add to it constantly. We started keeping that promise the very day we went live and have not stopped since. Here's a look at what is new, by section:
History Section:
We added some new engagements in the War Chronology Area. This area will be expanding for quite some time, as we have a ways to go here.
In case you are wondering how we are determining what events get put in first, we are going in chronological order for different geographic areas as they appear in Todd's campaign notebooks, then we'll go back and use other notebooks to fill in. The major areas that need filling in are for the Northern Army (Canada), Nova Scotia, Rhode Island, West Florida, Jamaica, West Indies and Central America. We're getting there…
Military Section:
The Regimental History Area has some new regiments, and existing ones have been added to. Here is a summary.
Charlestown Volunteer Battalion. We have added a few documents on this South Carolina Militia unit.
DeLancey's Brigade. Added more documents for one of the largest Provincial Regiments to serve in the war.
Georgia Light Dragoons. There were two corps by this name, and we added them both. One unit was a Provincial unit of two troops raised immediately following the capture of Savannah. They seem to have been reduced to one troop and then just disappear in 1781. This unit was unique in that it was mostly composed of soldiers serving in both Provincial and British regiments, i.e. the 71st Regiment of Foot, New York Volunteers, New Jersey Volunteers and DeLancey's Brigade. The other unit was raised by order of the government of Georgia in 1781 and also consisted of two troops.
Georgia Loyalists. This unit was raised in 1779 and commanded by James Wright, son of the Royal Governor of Georgia, Sir James Wright. They were drafted into the King's (Carolina) Rangers in 1782.
Georgia Rangers. We have added a couple of documents on this unit, which actually pre-dated the American Revolution.
Indian Department. A few documents concerning the 1777 St. Leger and Burgoyne Campaign have been added.
New Jersey Volunteers. The contest answer, in the form of a listing of all officers of the regiment, is now up and running. It includes name, rank, and date of commission/warrant.
North Carolina Loyalists. We are fleshing out this section nicely and will ultimately mix them with the other groups individually. We have set up the North Carolina Independent Company, North Carolina Militia, North Carolina Volunteers, and the Royal North Carolina Regiment. There will be more to come here.
South Carolina Light Dragoons. This is one of three independent Provincial troops of cavalry raised in South Carolina. The troop, commanded by Captain Fenwick, was drafted into the South Carolina Royalists at the end of 1781.
West Florida Loyal Refugees. Nothing harder to try to study than Loyalists on the frontiers! West Florida certainly falls within that category. This unit was raised by the Indian Superintendent John Stuart and apparently consisted of four troops or companies. They appear to have melted away or were disbanded by the time of the Siege of Pensacola in 1781.
We have added one new case in the Court Martial Area, that of two members of the Charlestown Volunteer Battalion. This case is different than most of the others we have, as it is at a company/regimental level, rather than a far more serious General Court Martial. We have also corrected an error found in the General Court Martial of John Bayard, King's Orange Rangers. Thanks to Dave Gray for a good catch!
The Muster Rolls Area now contains a new set of musters for the Guides & Pioneers dating from February 1779. The Guides & Pioneers were raised in 1776 at New York City and were commanded at various times throughout their existence by Captain Andreas Emmerich of Germany, Major Samuel Holland of New York, Captain (Major) Simon Fraser of the 71st Regiment, Colonel Beverly Robinson of the Loyal American Regiment, and Major John Aldington of New Jersey.
Genealogy Section:
We're very pleased to announce we have opened the Female Ancestors Area. As of now, there is not too much there, but that will change over time.
The centerpiece for now is an article on Loyalist families that was published in "The Brigade Dispatch", the scholarly publication of The Brigade of the American Revolution. We have also begun to link in some of the memorials and petitions filed by the ladies. There will be many more to come.
In addition, we have added a couple of documents concerning DeLancey's Brigade in the Post War Settlement Area.
Reenacting Section:
In the absence of photographs of the 18th Century, we have the next best thing: photos of reenactments of the 18th Century! Many thanks to our good friend Kerry Delorey for some excellent shots of past events. Please keep 'em coming! We have created a Photo Gallery of his shots for the Royal Highland Emigrants and added a few individual photos here and there.
We are in hopes of adding pages for several more Reenactment Groups in the next month. If you are a Loyalist reenactor and your group doesn't have a page here yet, please contact us about setting one up. There is no cost to your group.
&c &c &c Section:
Mostly some housecleaning here. Due to the tremendous response, we have divided the Genealogy part of the Message Board into three sections for easier reading, and we may need to subdivide again in the not too distant future.
We are very pleased to see that folks have started to help each other here. It also helps us know who you are looking for, so we can look for appropriate documents to post in the future.
Two new pages have been added to the Internet Links area, with more to come shortly. We now have a page to recognize sites that we know are linked to us. We have also added a page for GenWeb sites covering the areas where the Loyalists lived, fought or settled after the war, and are pleased to say that several of the GenWeb sites have linked to us in return as well.
Thanks to everyone who has left us a note in the Guestbook. We have broken it into three sections so that it doesn't take the better part of an hour to load!
We'd like to suggest that if you placed a genealogy query in the Guestbook when you signed it, you might also want to put a posting on one of the Genealogy Message Boards. The Guestbook has been growing and subdividing so fast, that we'd hate to see your query get lost in the shuffle. The Message Boards are organized to allow for quick location of postings that are of interest, plus when you post there, you can choose to be notified automatically via email if someone responds to your posting.
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Announcements
If you are on America Online, we invite you to stop by the Loyalist Genealogy Chat in the Golden Gate Genealogy Forum every other Monday night from 9-10 p.m. EST. Both of us attend these chats, and we will do our best to help answer your research questions in real time. It's also a great way to make connections with other Loyalist researchers.
During March, the chats will be held on the 13th and the 27th. On AOL, type in Keyword: roots, then click the Chat button and open up the Monday Lineup document, which will have a link to the meeting room. Or, if you prefer, you can copy and paste this link into your browser window: aol://2719:2-2-loy562r to go directly to the chat room.
If you are in the New Jersey area, you will have an opportunity on March 21st to hear Todd speak on the Loyalists of Hunterdon and Sussex Counties at the Hunterdon Historical Museum. His lecture is part of the museum's Muskets and Hearthstones, The Defense of Colonial New Jersey lecture series.
The lecture will be held in the Clinton Community Center on Halstead St. next to the new
library*. Start time is 8:00 p.m. Admission is $3.00 ($2.00 for museum members), and they would prefer that you register in advance. The address is Hunterdon Historical Museum, 56 Main St., Box 5005, Clinton, NJ 08809, phone 908-735-4101.
* Please note that this is a change of venue since the email publication of the newsletter.
And last, but certainly not least, we are very proud to announce that our site was honored by DearMYRTLE by being selected as one of her Best of the Internet for Genealogists award recipients for the week of February 13, 2000!
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News from our Visitors
The Kawartha Branch of the United Empire Loyalist Association of Canada has a new website! The URL is http://www.ptbo.igs.net/~davidkemlo/kawarthabrue.
On Saturday, June 17, 2000, the Bay of Quinte Branch of the United Empire Loyalists' Association of Canada will host its annual Landing Re-enactment at Adolphustown U.E. Loyalist Park. The celebration will honor the arrival and landing of our Loyalist ancestors on that site in June 1784 and salute the third official United Empire Loyalists' Day in Ontario on Monday, June 19th. For more details, visit the Bay of Quinte UEL website at http://genweb.net/~boquel.
The Bobby Moss Collection has recently been donated to the Historical Center of York County, South Carolina. The collection consists of 300,000+ records related to the Revolutionary era in South Carolina. For more information, contact Beth L. Carter, Archivist, at becarter@InfoAve.Net.
The Monmouth County Archives in Manalapan, New Jersey has notified us that they have a small record group of Tory Inquisitions, and Confiscation of Property records. Between the 2 sets of records there are about 61 names. The records include, at a minumum, the name of the individual and their residence in Monmouth County.
We have received an index of these records and will be starting a new section of the site devoted to Property Confiscations in the near future. In the meantime, if you would like more information on their holdings, please contact Mary Ann Kiernan at mkiernan@shore.co.monmouth.nj.us.
J.G. (Jerry) Braddock, Sr. writes that the author, Arthur Hailey, is doing a small book on his 5th great-uncle, Captain William Lyford, Jr., primarily from Jerry's materials. In our Black Loyalists Area, Jerry was able to find information about the pilot, Trap, who was a slave of William Lyford.
Up until the Revolution, Lyford was chief harbor pilot of the Savannah River in Georgia. He fled to St. Augustine where he piloted British men-of-war along the Southern coast. For his services he received a 448 acre grant on New Providence Island in the Bahamas, on which now stands the exclusive residential resort, Lyford Cay, where both Arthur Hailey and Sean Connery live.
The Georgia GenWeb site has posted an excerpt from Jerry's book Wooden Ships - Iron Men that contains a list of Loyalists first published in "The Georgia Gazette" in 1783 which you can view at http://www.rootsweb.com/~gataylor/loyalist.htm.
Until next month.....Happy Hunting!
Your Most Humble & Obedient Servants,
Todd & Nan
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