The loyalists of America and their times

by Egerton Ryerson

22. Luke Carscallen (resident of Bay of Quinté) was an Irishman by birth, and had served in the British army; he had retired and emigrated to the American colonies prior to the revolution. He desired to remain neutral and take no part in the contest. The rebels, however, said to him, that inasmuch as he was acquainted with military tactics, he must join them or be regarded as a King's man. His reply was that he had fought for the King, and he would do it again, consequently an order was issued to arrest him; but when they came to take him, he had secreted himself. The escape was a hurried one, and all his possessions were at the mercy of the rebels—land to the amount of 12,000 acres. They, disappointed at not catching him, took his young and tender son, and threatened to hang him if he would not reveal his father's place of concealment. The brave little fellow replied, "Hang away!" and the cruel men, under the name of liberty, carried out their threat, and three times was he suspended until he was almost dead, yet he would not tell; and then, when taken down, one of the monsters actually kicked him. (Canniff.)

23. John Diamond was born in Albany, with several brothers. An elder brother was drafted, but he tried to escape a service so repugnant to his feelings; was concealed for some time, and upon a sick bed. The visits of the doctor led to suspicion, and the house was visited by rebels. Although he had been placed in a bed so arranged that it was thought his presence would not be detected, his breathing betrayed him. They at once required his father to give a bond for $1,200 that his son should not be removed while sick. He got well, and some time after again sought to escape, but was caught, and handcuffed to another. Being removed from one place to another, the two prisoners managed to knock their guards on the head, and ran for life through the woods, chained together. One would sometimes run on one side of a sapling, and the other on the opposite side. At night they managed to rub their handcuffs off, and finally escaped to Canada. Of the other brothers, two were carried off by the rebels and were never more heard of; John was taken to the rebel army when old enough to do service, but he also escaped to Canada, and enlisted in Rogers' Battalion, in which he served until the end of the war, when he settled with the company at Fredericksburg. He married Miss Loyst, a native of Philadelphia, whose ancestors were German. She acted no inferior part, for a woman, during the exciting times of the revolution. They were married in Lower Canada. They spent their first summer in Upper Canada in clearing a little spot of land, and in the fall got a little grain in the ground. They slept during the summer under a tree, but erected a small hut before winter set in.

24. Ephraim Tisdale, of Freetown, Massachusetts. In 1775, he fled from home, and went to New York. During the war, while on a voyage to St. Augustine, Florida, he abandoned his vessel at sea to avoid capture, and gained the shore in safety. Though nearly destitute of money, he accomplished an overland journey to New York, a distance, by the route which he travelled, of fifteen hundred miles. In 1783 he embarked at New York for New Brunswick, in the ship Brothers, Captain Walker; and on the passage his wife gave birth to a son, who was named for the master of the ship. Mr. Tisdale held civil and military offices in New Brunswick. He removed to Upper Canada in 1808, settled in the Township of Charlotteville, near Vittoria, and died in 1816. He left eight sons and four daughters. Walker Tisdale, Esq., of St. John (the son above referred to), was in Canada in 1845, when the descendants of his father there were 169, of whom he saw 163. The Tisdales were active on the side of the Crown in the insurrection of 1837. The whole family have always been distinguished for loyalty.

25. Lemuel Wilmot, of Long Island, New York, entered the King's service as an officer, and at the peace was captain in the Loyal American Regiment. In 1783 he settled on the River St. John, New Brunswick, near Fredericton, where he continued to reside until his death, which took place in 1814. Five sons survived him. The Honourable Lemuel A. Wilmot, the son of his younger son William, was a member of the Legislative Assembly, and leader of the Liberal party; became Attorney-General, and afterwards Chief Justice, and ultimately Lieutenant-Governor of the province. He had for many years been superintendent of the Sunday-school, and leader of the choir in the (Methodist) Church to which he belonged, and continued to discharge the duties of both offices during the five years that he was Lieutenant-Governor, and until his death, which occurred suddenly in May, 1878.

I have not space to extend these notices of individual combatants in the American Revolution, though I might add scores to the number of those I have already noticed, equally loyal and courageous, and equal in their energy, sacrifices and sufferings in fleeing to Canada from American Republican persecution, far beyond anything endured by the Pilgrim and Puritan Fathers of New England, to whose enterprise, energy, and privations I have done ample justice in the first volume of this history.

The Loyalists fled to Canada, and settled chiefly in Lower Canada, on the northern banks of the St. Lawrence, between Montreal and Kingston, on the Bay of Quinté, Prince Edward, the frontiers of the Niagara district, and the northern shores of Lake Erie. In the following chapter I will present an epitome of the immigration of the first Loyalists to the Bay of Quinté, to the Niagara frontier, and to the northern shores of Lake Erie, especially of what was called the "Long Point" country, their modes of struggling their way thither, the privations and labours of their early settlement. I will here add a few passages from Dr. Canniff's Settlement of Upper Canada, with Special Reference to Bay Quinté, in regard to the Loyalists fleeing into Lower Canada, and making their way up the St. Lawrence to Kingston and Bay Quinté.

"The batteaux," says the late Sheriff Sherwood, of Brockville, "by which the refugees emigrated were principally built at Lachine, nine miles from Montreal. They were calculated to carry four or five families, with almost two tons weight. Twelve boats constituted a brigade, and each brigade had a conductor, with five men in each, one of whom steered. The duty of the conductor was to give directions for the safe management of the boats, to keep them together, and when they came to a rapid they left a portion of the boats in charge of one man. The boats ascending were doubly manned, and drawn by a rope fastened at the bow of the boat, having four men in the boat with setting poles; thus the men walked along the side of the river, sometimes in the water or on the edge of the bank, as circumstances occurred. Having reached the head of the rapids the boats were left with a man, and the other men went back for the other boats;" and so they continued until the rapids were mounted. Lachine was the starting place—a place of some twenty dwellings.

It was by these batteaux that the Loyalist refugee officers and their families, as well as the soldiers and their families, passed from the shores of Lake Champlain, from Sorel and St. Lawrence, where they had temporarily lived, to Upper Canada. It was also by these or the Schenectady or Durham boat that the pioneer Loyalists made their way from Oswego.

"Thus it is seen that to gain the northern shore of the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario was a task of no easy nature, and the steps by which the Loyalists came were taken literally inch by inch, and were attended by hard and venturesome labour. Records are not wanting of the severe hardships endured by families on their way to their wooded lands. Supplied with limited comforts, perhaps only the actual necessaries of life, they advanced slowly by day along dangerous rapids, and at night rested under the blue sky. But our Loyalist forefathers and mothers were made of stern stuff, and all was borne with noble heroism.

"This toilsome mode of travelling continued for many a year. John Ferguson, writing in 1788 from Fredericksburg, Bay Quinté, to a friend in Lachine, Lower Canada, says of his journey: 'After a most tedious and fatiguing journey I arrived here, nineteen days on the way, sometimes for whole days up to the waist in water or mire.' But the average time required to ascend the rapids was from ten to twelve days, and three or four to descend.