Raymond Paddock Gorham Collection #2

.
RAYMOND PADDOCK GORHAM COLLECTION
PANB MC211
This collection is made up of many and varied items. The following is a verbatim copy of records dealing with the Loyalist Settlers of Kingston Parish that R.P.G. had collected and organized. It would appear that this might well have been a draft copy of his introduction to a proposed History of Kingston Parish.

Notes on the Loyalist Settlers of Kingston Parish.

    Many of the people who live on the farms of Kingston Parish today know little about the men and women who formed those farms from the forested hillsides of a new country and as years pass the farmers of succeeding  generations will know still less.  The time is opportune to gather together all the information we can about the founders of the citizenship we now enjoy for with every passing year it becomes more difficult to find.

    The people who settled on the farms of Kingston were of no weak race, they had suffered the miseries of several years of war of persecution, of hardships of many kinds and finally of expulsion from their homes and all that years of association had made dear to them in the land in which they lived.
    For many of them youth was past and the giving up of the fruits had comforts attained by years of toil and starting life a new in a more northern and wilderness land was a hardship to try their courage and hardihood. They had to begin under unfamiliar conditions in a new country, far from established settlements and those for the most part unfriendly, far from markets and with but meagre facilities for transportation, in summer and almost none at all in winter. They were a sturdy people. They were an educated and enterprising people. The farms the formed, the roads they built, the churches and schools the established, the system of government which they founded all stand as lasting evidence of their abilities.  The labour of their hands and minds was toward the upbuilding of a citizenship in their new wilderness country like unto that which they had enjoyed in their youth and in which their children might in the future enjoy the comforts which they themselves had to relinquish. To that end the remainder of their lives was given and when they could do no more and one by one were called to the new life in the unknown world that was the heritage they left ---- an organized, law abiding, progressive citizenship.

    In the several church yards of the parish and in scattered graves on different farms, the founders of Kingston, sturdy men and fearless women were laid to rest.  Some of these graves are marked and well known to posterity but many are not.  Their common monument is a social one, one which they themselves erected by earnest and patient endeavour---- the peaceful, ordered, law abiding civilization of the region.

    One hundred and forty years only have passed since the Loyalist settlers of Kingston began to form the farms from the wilderness of forest trees which then covered the hills from crest to shore.  That is but a short time in the history of a country and even at this time we have not quite lost touch with them by the spoken word for there yet remain a few old people who in their youth knew and talked with the last of the original Loyalist settlers.  Even though this is the case it is  surprising how many of the records of their lives and labours have been lost.  Farms have changed hands, houses have been burned, torn down or moved; families have died out or moved away, strangers have taken their places.  At the present time there are farmers on the farms of Kingston who do not know even the names of the men and women who formed those farms from the wilderness four generations back. There is little doubt but what at some future time more interest will be taken in the Loyalist founders of New Brunswick and the few remaining records will be sought for and treasured as we see the records of the Plymouth settlers treasured now.

    The parish itself is of particular interest as one of the oldest in New Brunswick and as representing the carrying out of a direct order of King George III which directed that the subdivisions of countries should be called parishes, following the English form.

    "It is Our Will and Pleasure that the same be divided into such Parishes and Countries as shall be thought expedient by any necessary Act or Acts of Assembly, a Draught of which Bill you shall transmit to us by one of our Principal Secretaries of State."

Instructions to Thomas Carleton

    The prevailing form throughout America is Township and when a part of New Brunswick under the name of Sunbury County formed part of Nova Scotia, several townships were established. The township of Amesbury included the present Kingston and the name appears to have been used for two years after the settlement of the Loyalists at Kingston. By order in council Governor  Carlton established countries and their subdivisions called parishes and the Parish of Kingston came into existence in 1786. The loyalists had named their settlement Kingston and the parish took its name from the settlement. It was at that time much larger than at present and possibly followed the lines of the old Township of Amesbury. Kings County was originally divided into four parishes, Westfield, Sussex, Springfield, and Kingston. In 1795, Norton Parish was created by rearranging the boundaries of Sussex and Kingston. Greenwhich Parish was cut off from Kingston at the same time, and Hampton Parish formed form parts of Sussex and Kingston. It included parts of the present parishes of Upham, Hammond and Rothesay. Kars remained a part of Kingston for nearly seventy years longer and was erected as a separate parish in 1859.

    It is interesting to note that New Brunswick is the only place on the North American Continent where the Parish exists as a unit of Civil Government as in England.

Notes on Loyalist settlers.

The following notes will deal in a general way with settlers in the original parish of Kingston as information is obtained. The numbers of their grants of land are taken from the original map of the grants in the Crown Land office at Fredericton and the information on their estate and position in the American provinces before coming to Canada to some extent from New England histories but chiefly from their own sworn evidence before the Loyalist Claims Commissioners at St John in 1787. The original copy of this evidence is in the Archives of Congress at Washington and a copy in the Archives of Canada.

Later in the files there are two other historical items written as follows:

The Loyalist Settlers

    More than a century and a quarter has passed since the people whose names appear in the foregoing list began to farm [...] for themselves in the forest of the Kingston Peninsula.
    In a history of a country this is a brief period but in listing of families it represents some five or more generations. Already much of the history of the original grantees has been lost, houses have burned down, farms have changed ownership, people have moved away, families have died out. On a number of Kingston farms at present are [owners ?] who do not even know the name of the original grantee who first cleared the land and erected the first houses. There is no doubt that at some future time more attention will be given to the history of individual Loyalist. Each year delay in the making of records makes a more difficult to obtain information about the people who were the founders of this parish.
 In the notes which follow the available information at present is written down in the hopes that it may be added to in the future, The information regarding the position and [estate] of the grantees before the American Revolution and their adventures during the war are in part taken from New England History, but chiefly from the [...] sworn statements before the Loyalist Claims Commission in 1787. The original copy of this evidence is in the Library of Congress in Washington, a copy in the Ontario Archives by which province it has been published in book form through the kindness of Dr. W.S.
Carter the writer has had access to this storehouse of information and has tried to make it useful in presenting the history of individual families and farms.

..............................

Appendix Notes

    The Loyalist at Eaton's Neck cut wood for New York. Farm owners, rebels, petitioned to have them restrained from doing so. Gov. Robertson of New York refused them their petition on account of the people having to subsist.
    A petition from John Fowler, Israel Hoyt and David Pickett to Gov. Robertson in 1782 mentioned that they had land formerly owned by John Glass Hobart and their property was appropriated by the crews of vessels stationed at [Hu...lengtien ?] Bay for their protection. They asked Gov. Robertson to interpose on their behalf with [Adwind] Digby.

    The two eldest children of Silas Raymond, Grace and Samuel, [....] remembered the burning of Norwich.

    Azor Betts, MD, first doctor of Kingston. Smallpox broke out in Kingston some years after the settlement and Dr. Betts established a sort of hospital and the children were all inoculated. Charles Raymond was one of those inoculated.



Mounted: 1 June 1999
Updated:Sunday, 17-Nov-2002 09:20:25 MST