Our place in time.
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 UE after your name and on your license plate.
Our place in time. Our spot, in history.
The town of Shelburne, Nova Scotia, where we visited my grandfather's family most summers, was the setting for my first genealogy discoveries.
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.
My mother's cousin Doris Robertson and me, 1972
I was still a kid, age 14, when I found out. It’s decades later now, but the memory of amazement still fills my body and makes the tears fizz. In my fertile teenage imagination, like Indiana Jones following clues to an ancient treasure, I solved the riddle that made an old wooden door creak open to let the billowing mist out. I extended my warm living arm into the unknown, and one at a time, people clasped my hand and emerged, wearing odd clothes and bearing unusual names. Even though they spoke with a different accent, they looked like me. They recognized me and greeted me: “How now? What cheer?”
Shelburne is big on genealogy as well as history, and that Society had several helpful researchers working with plenty of records in their rooms above the brick firehouse. I headed there with a purpose: discovering if we were Loyalists.
the Shelburne County Archives has since moved to Barrington, NS
Here, on Nova Scotia’s impressive Crown Land Grant compilation map, is our name. Robertson.
Nova Scotia Crown Land Grant Map, a compilation of grants from about 1783-1830. Kenney Island is just north of Wm. Robertson's land grant.
me at age 14 with two of the ancestors I discovered who had been unknown to the rest of the family
So I have been researching William Robertson, land grantee, ever since I was 14. But both Robertson and William are common names and Shelburne had 30,000 Loyalist inhabitants. There were at least two William Robertsons, one a shoemaker and the other a gentleman. William the shoemaker and his wife Jane lived on the west side of Shelburne Harbour, where the land grant is, whereas the gentleman lived in town.
William the shoemaker’s signature
I have learned more about their lives in the last forty years, but no answer to the burning question, where were they from and what did they do for King George to get 50 acres of property? You see, after the American Revolution was over, there were thousands of people who had remained loyal to England and were now in danger, now that they were on the losing side. King George III, nice guy that he was, offered them land in his other colonies. General Sir Guy Carleton, even nicer guy, arranged for 50,000 Loyalists, including 10,000 former slaves, living all throughout the new United States, to come to New York City. Then he arranged 36,000 of them transport to Shelburne, Nova Scotia. Shelburne was supposed to become the new capital. It had the best harbor on the east coast, and for a while, it was the fifth most populated city in North America, after Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Charleston.
Never heard of Shelburne, you say? That gives you an idea of how well the plan went. The distribution logistics were really messed up. Most grantees realized the land was infertile and sold up and left, and the others just gave up and left, within just a few years.
Jane and William were 31 and 26 when they got their grant. Did they already have children? I don’t know. After their arrival, they went on to have seven children: Agnes, Eleanor, Ann, James B., twins Elizabeth and Margaret, and John R.
William the shoemaker was fairly well educated, by which I mean literate. He was considered a yeoman, a social class distinction that meant a farmer who owned his own land, a middle class status a man could be proud of. He could sign his name, no easy feat in the days of quill pens, and he had several books, albeit old ones, worth 8 shillings when he died. ( His appraisers, maybe not as educated, weren't interested in naming the book titles.) His son John, on the other hand, was unable to write his name and signed with his mark. A consequence of living in the country?
a typical section of the land grant today
I can imagine him plying his trade in Shelburne, which he would have reached by crossing the harbor. Making shoes at home and carrying them across to sell? Clearing the land to build and till would require felling trees and removing rocks. The government provided wheat, blankets, and an ax the first year, and half rations the second. Maybe they spent their first summer in a tent, and built a cabin for the winter. There was certainly enough wood, enough rocks for a sturdy foundation and chimney, and enough slope for a cellar. The land slopes downward to the harbor fairly steeply, not leaving very much flat ground for living or growing.
Here is a topographic map of the land grant. Ignore the roads; they weren't there then. The land grant is a thin rectangle. It starts at approximately the D in Shore Road and is about the width of the word Road. It meets the shore at the indent of the water next to the word Shore Road. Now go all the way diagonally to the bottom left. You can see it goes from pale purple to turquoise to pale green to green pretty quickly, and then to yellow to orange to red. That's the elevation. From sea level to 49 feet to 62 to 75 to 85 quickly. Then a little bit of 138 feet to a large amount of 157 feet to another big section of 174 feet. It eventually ends at North Churchover Lake, which is at that high elevation. It has a nice fast-running brook, but other than that, how would you farm on such a slope? Or build your house?
Thirty years later, Jane and William had a dwelling and 4 acres under cultivation. The 4 acres produced 2 bushels of grain, 3 tons of hay, and 100 bushels of potatoes, clearly the main crop. What can you do with only 2 bushels of grain (not wheat)? 3 tons of hay would probably feed the 4 horned cattle, 3 swine, and 1 sheep that they had. Maybe they did a little spinning and weaving with the sheep's wool. Without a horse, maybe they tilled the earth with oxen (included in the horned cattle?), and certainly traveled by boat.
By 1827, Jane had died, the daughters were married I think, their son James and family lived next door, and William was living in their dwelling with their son John and his family. John had a wife Catharine, a little girl Eleanor Elizabeth, and a newborn baby William. Also living with them was William's daughter Elizabeth (I am almost certain) and her husband Joseph Ellis (possibly). Elizabeth was only 36, but she was blind.
William died 19 December 1836. By this time he had acquired 150 acres. He left his son John an estate worth 71 pounds 6 shillings:
150 acres Land also House ....worth 50 pounds
4 Cows and a Calf....16 pounds
2 Hogs (small)....5 pounds
6 chairs....12 shillings
2 tables....5 shillings
1 chest....10 shillings
1 feather Bed and Bedstead....1 pound
1 small flax wheel....5 shillings
Bed Cloathing....10 shillings
a Lot of Old Books (8)....8 shillings
a tea kettle and two pots (old)....6 shillings
a CupBoard....10 shillings
There was one stipulation: John had to take care of his blind sister Elizabeth, who was currently living with William. Elizabeth got a cow.
Ok, so William and Jane had two sons, James and John, and they left John their 150 acres. Again, very common names. Are they going to connect to me somehow?
As it happens, my grandfather’s grandfather was named John Robertson. Such a common name, but…so many people had left Shelburne that it resembled a ghost town at times, with grass growing in the streets and wild pigs living in unused houses. How many John Robertsons were there likely to be? When I found a J. Robinson, I wondered. Could he be the missing link, spelled wrong?
The find was on a map by A. F. Church from about 1870. I love this man and the government who hired him to map the entire province. Being the government, of course, they argued over price, and they didn’t always have the tax money to pay him. So the process took over twenty years. It is said that Mr. Church would arrive in a town and ask the inhabitants who lived where. Sometimes he would go to the school and ask the students. So there are lots of errors. Even better for my case.
A. F. Church map, about 1870
J. Robinson and J. Robinson, west of the Y of the word Birchtown Bay, sure look like they live on the land grant, judging by the shoreline. That would be William and Jane’s sons, James and John Robertson, name misspelled. One house is by the road, and the other is by the water. Note how close it is to the water. Kenney Island is not pictured.
Our place in time. Our spot, in history. Our location, across ages.
Me at my grandfather’s birthplace in 1972
In my childhood trips to Shelburne, we would visit my grandfather’s birthplace down the road. The old house had been torn down to put the new road thru. This picture is of me at age 8 by my grandfather’s grandmother’s apple orchard where our ancestors had buried each other, vegetation too thick to see anything.
- In 1921, visiting the house where my grandfather was born: from left, my grandfather Joe Robertson with son Frank, his father Joe Robertson with my mother Anne, his mother Ann Acker Robertson with dog, unknown man with Joe's son Joseph Jr., Joe's brother Havelock Robertson
Me with my mother’s cousins Ellis and Harry Robertson at our parents’/grandparents’ birthplace, torn down to put the road thru, 1972. Harry in middle is walking on the railroad track. Note Kenney Island in the background and the closeness to the water. - same property, present day; note the closeness of the water and the point of land on right
my great-grandmother Ann Acker Robertson with her grandson Bob Robertson and unknown women, 1920s, on her property; note the closeness of the water and the point of land on right
My cousin Fred owns a small plane and had flown over Shelburne years ago to view the land grant, but he didn’t really know where it was. So I went to the Genealogical Society to find out. The researcher compared the current property tax map to the land grant map.
There was the curve in the shoreline. There was Kenney Island. There was the point of land a little farther down.
“That’s great!” I said. “By the way, my grandfather was born on a piece of property around here; my cousin Joe still owns it. Can you show me where that is?”
“It’s the same piece of land,” she said.
It’s the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War. William and Jane Robertson were granted land. We still have it????
I called Cousin Joe. “Do you know that your land has been in our family since the Revolution?” He did not.
Property tax maps are not accessible to the public, but our land grant is at the word "Shore." Note Kenney Island to the north. This Shore Road is a lot closer to the harbor than the previous road, cutting through properties. The 1920 house stood where the road is now. Note how close it is to the water. The dotted line used to be a railroad and is now a trail.
After that bombshell, Cousin Fred and I undeniably needed to walk the land grant, now that we knew where it was. We chose April with its long hours of early spring daylight, but temperatures still cold enough so the vegetation that had kept me out of Great-Great-Grandmother’s apple orchard graveyard hadn’t yet started to grow. We traced a foundation of cut stone (James Robertson was a stonemason). We found rusty artifacts — giant door hinges. The two-level foundation, plus the door hinges fit for a barn, plus the picture of Aunt Marion below, proved we had found the barn. Odd slices of stone, stuck in the ground within a low stone wall, suggested graves in a small family cemetery.
Marion, wife of my grandfather’s brother Havelock Robertson, in 1924 by big doors proving it’s the barn. Note the cut stone foundation and two levels.- me standing where Aunt Marion sat by barn door, holding her picture, 2018
foundation of cut stone showing two levels, proving it’s the barn, on land grant, 2018
thin stone that could be a gravestone, found on land grant, 2018
Our place in time…Our spot, in history…Our location, across ages…Our environment over the eras.
Loyalists were promised good farmland and a thriving city. What they got was rocky land and complaining citizens. Our people became stone masons or farmed the land anyway. Loyalists left looking for fertile ground. Our people turned to fishing. Wooden shipbuilding businesses ceased when ship construction turned to steel. Some of us went to the city, to Halifax or Boston. But some of us stayed. We kept the land. And we didn’t even know it.
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