In the US, siding with England in the Revolutionary War makes you at best a loser and at worst a traitor. But in Canada, being a United Empire Loyalist is a badge of honor. If you can prove your descent from one, you can apply for a lineage society, earning the right to put UEL after your name and on your license plate.
The town of Shelburne, Nova Scotia, where we visited my grandfather's family most summers, was the setting for my first genealogy discoveries. (see Acker Pedigree Chart and Acker Family Descendant Charts)
Shelburne has a tourism economy based on the town's founding in 1783. At the entrance, a large sign flanked by a redcoated colonist, ripe for photo ops, proclaims that Shelburne was founded by United Empire Loyalists. After one childhood photo op, I asked my mother's cousin Doris if our family were UE Loyalists. She said she didn't know. At age 8, I decided that someday when I was old enough, I would find out.
Shelburne Genealogical Society has now moved to Barrington, NSDecades later, the amazement still makes the tears fizz. As a teenager I had a more fertile imagination than I do now: like Indiana Jones following clues to an ancient treasure, I solve the riddle that makes an old wooden door creak open to let the billowing mist out. I extend my warm living arm into the unknown, and one at a time, people clasp my hand and emerge, wearing odd clothes and bearing unusual names. Even though they speak with a different accent, they look like me.
I guess it's so emotional for me because my family didn't have a long tradition of a lineage. We just didn't know anything beyond our own grandparents. And I am the one piercing the veil.
On our trips, we always visited our family graves at the Churchover Anglican Church, which is really named Church of the Resurrection. Located on, no surprise, Anglican Church Road, it probably gives Churchover its name. When we visited in my childhood, the church was intermittently used, grass mowed, and neighbored by the unused schoolhouse across the road. Now the schoolhouse is something else and the church has been decommissioned. But the graveyard is still maintained and accepts burials.
the big white gravestones in front are our ancestors, but we didn't know it then
The pristine white gravestones adorning the very front line belong to Capt. Isaac J. McS. Acker and his wife Elizabeth C. Acker. No matter how many years passed between our visits, they remained perfect. I asked Cousin Doris if they were our ancestors. She didn't know that either. They were so beautiful, I willed them to be.
me when I found out that they are my people, 1978
The Genealogical Society housed a family history booklet made by a large clan of Acker descendants. In it I found my great-grandmother, Ann Elizabeth Acker, with her parents Captain Isaac John McSparling Acker and Elizabeth C. Acker. Captain Isaac and Elizabeth were the people on the lovely gravestones! Yes!
In another eureka! moment, I found an 1811 marriage of a Henry Acker to a Catherine Sparlin, and I was sure that was why the Captain had a McSparling in the middle of his very long name. True! They were mother and son. Henry's marriage in 1811 meant that he was born in the 1700s. Our family back to the 1700s! Periodically in my teens, I brought that incredible fact out in my mind to savor it.
And we were Loyalists! Captain Isaac's grandparents, Henry Acker's parents, were John B. Acker and Esther Crank. They had come to Shelburne after the Revolution and gotten a land grant.
Grace Robertson Wilson with daughter Edie, Newton Centre, Mass, 1973Coming home from Shelburne, we stopped to see my Auntie Grace in Boston with our findings. From her I learned that our family had lived in Ossining, New York before the Revolution. When the War was lost, the new government confiscated our land and built Sing Sing Prison on it. Aunt Marion, who married into the family with ambition, an iron will, and a strong sense of her rights, had investigated with an eye to suing the state of New York for compensation. Either she never got around to it, was denied, or, most likely I think, never amassed enough evidence, because we didn't get any money.
Marion, wife of Joe and Grace's brother Havelock Robertson, in Valley Stream, NY, 1948
Marion by Churchover barn, 1924Many of my relatives are very tall, very thin, very pale, very light-haired, and very long-lived, or some combination thereof. These are our Acker genes at work. At least 3 men are over 6ft-5. My mother could get sunburned in the shade, and none of us were allowed outside until we had been lotioned up with what passed for sunscreen back then. Auntie Grace died 2 months before her 100th birthday. I thought these were our Robertson genes because that is who we are. Then I realized that this lady is very tall and very blonde, and she is Mr. Robertson's wife. Ann Acker. More, she is a double Acker, since her grandfathers were brothers.
my mother Anne and her father Joe show up shockingly blonde in pictures, Boston, 1922
brothers Joe, left, and Havelock Robertson, right, are 6-4 and 6-2. Their father Joe is in the middle holding Joe's baby Jean, Valley Stream, NY, 1928
my grandfather Joe Robertson was 6ft-4 and 185 pounds on his draft registration. Here, with his sister Blanche on left, looking about 5ft-11, and his wife Bessie on right, looking short at 5ft-7, Newton Centre, MA, 1948Years later, the Acker genes for long lives delighted me, for I found that Henry Acker had lived to be 90, and that meant that he died late enough to be included in the new government vital statistics. There was more proof that we were Loyalists - he was born in New York, and it gave his father's name, John B. Acker. A few pages over, John Acker Jr. died with parents John and Esther Acker. 2 lines down, a person I didn't know named Catherine Shultz had the same parents. They must all be siblings! She was long-lived enough to show that she had been born in the United States in 1783.
my mother Anne Robertson Sulzbach, Ann St. well, Shelburne, 1960
me at Anne Street well, Shelburne, 1972.JPG)
my cousin Sandy, with Acker genes, and me, Ann Street well, Shelburne, 2016Stay tuned for Ackers in Philipsburgh!
References:
https://uelac.ca/ United Empire Loyalist Association of Canada
https://www.shelburnecountyarchives.ca/
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