Grandma's Granny's Family Album

  Recap: In Chapters One and Two, we met Sarah Rushton walking her land grant in Westchester, Nova Scotia with her daughter Elizabeth and grandchildren. Sarah, her husband Jeremiah, and his family had run a successful cordwaining business in New York City during the Revolutionary War, but were exiled as Loyalists at the peace. Promised a land grant in Nova Scotia as a soldier with the Westchester Refugees, the family boarded a ship for the unknown.  Elizabeth, fretting over her own husband's plans to move the family to Upper Canada, asked, “How do you know when to go? What do you bring to a new life in the wilderness?” The Story of the Evacuee’s Wife...a fictional look “Then what happened, Grannie?” Eddie wanted to know as the family continued walking along the land grant’s path. “Did the big ship bring you right here?” He looked around them at the narrow fast-flowing brook.

    The Black Loyalists suffer a double whammy in American history…they supported the losing side in our origin story, and they don’t fit our founding myth that the Declaration of Independence declared all men are created equal and deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Or that we’re the good guys. The Virginia Proclamation is not in the Virginia public school curriculum. Patrick Henry’s speech advocating independence from England, given at St. John’s Church in Richmond, is. 1 "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" 2 It is obvious to everyone who hears it that Patrick Henry, a slaveholder, held some cognitive dissonance he probably didn’t even notice.

  As I wrote, I heard the voices of my grandmother and her sisters whenever Sarah spoke. (see Rushton Pedigree Chart, Sarah Hall & Jeremiah Rushton Descendant Chart, Sarah Hall Rushton, the Cordwainer's Wife ~ Chapter One, Revolutionary Cowboy in New York ~ Jeremiah Rushton Stole for King and Country Parts One and Two) In Chapter One, we met Sarah Rushton on her land grant in Westchester, Nova Scotia, walking her favorite path with her daughter Elizabeth and grandchildren. Sarah, her husband Jeremiah, and his family had run a successful cordwaining business in New York City during the Revolutionary War, earning good silver money serving thousands of people jammed into a city under occupation. When peace came and Jeremiah's regiment was disbanded, the Loyalist family faced exile. Elizabeth, fretting over her own husband's plans to move the family to Upper Canada, challenged her mother: it wasn't Sarah's choice to leave New York, she said. Danger forced her. The S...

    As I wrote about Sarah, she came to life...I got to know her as a person.  I came to know what she would  say next,  what she would do.  As I wrote her voice, I heard it in my head. Listening to it, I realized it was the voices of her great-great-granddaughters, who grew up in the county she made home...Nana (Bessie), Aunt Eva, Aunt Anna, Aunt Helena, Aunt Connie. The voices I grew up hearing, telling stories of their lives. (see Rushton Pedigree Chart, Sarah Hall & Jeremiah Rushton Descendant Chart, Revolutionary Cowboy in New York ~ Jeremiah Rushton Stole for King and Country Parts One and Two) The Story of the Cordwainer’s Wife….a fictional look Westchester, Nova Scotia, about 1827 “This is my favorite spot on all of our land grant.” Sarah Rushton spread her arms across the small peninsula fashioned by the U-curve of the meadow brook. 1 She looked at her daughter Elizabeth, walking the path beside her as the children 2 played hide-and-go-seek b...

  A Pilot It was probably a good thing William was not still mustered with the Armed Boatmen.  They were not one of the regiments recommended by Sir Guy Carleton, the British general in charge of the surrender, to receive land grants from the Crown for their service in the war. 25 ( See Part 1, William Rowland, Armed Boatman, see Acker Pedigree Chart, see Rowland Family Descendant Chart) But William did get a land grant. He was one of only 15 men to be personally ordered a land grant by Rear Admiral Digby of the British Navy, who had been sent to manage the British withdrawal, because of his service to the King as a pilot. 26

  What is an armed boatman? A man, with a boat, and weapons? Did he row around the coast and then all of a sudden, stand up and shoot? Yes. He pretty much did. My 4th great-grandfather William Rowland was a private in the Loyalist Company of Armed Boatmen in the Revolutionary War. 1 Whaleboat War Back then, everybody knew what “armed boats” were, the official name for the whaleboats used by privateers, another official name meaning a legal pirate. A whaleboat was a narrow open rowboat, 30 to 36 feet long, with pointed bow and stern and 8 to 10 oars to be rowed by 8 to 10 men. A boat may have had a short removable mast; some had small cannons, but otherwise the armed part referred to the bayonets, swords, and muskets carried by the crew. 2 Whaleboats of privateers in the Revolution, https://www.monmouthhistory.org/250/the-bold-privateering-of-adam-hyler Rebel whaleboats had a Mate as the helmsman and eight privates as the crew, which rotated. If the Loyalist boats were similarly cre...