Monday, January 8, 2018

Genealogy Story – Loyalists in my Family Tree

When the Revolutionary War broke out in the 1770s, it was not an instantaneous event where suddenly all the colonists took up arms. As I noted in (*1), the resentment against the actions of the British because of things like the Stamp Act and the Intolerable Acts had been growing for several years. Nonetheless, the forming of a colonial army in 1775 and the signing and publication of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 required people to take sides.

But this was not a trivial decision to make. There were many benefits to being a member of the British empire. As noted in (*2), “It’s not an easy decision. Not only will your way of life be drastically affected, but whomever you choose to side with will make you instant enemies.”

The population of the colonies at this time was about 2.5 million, with about .5 million being black slaves, primarily located in the southern colonies although there were some in the northern colonies as well. According to (*3), about 15-20% of the white colonists, or 300,000-400,000 were loyalists. There were some black loyalists as well, as one of the tactics of the British was to offer freedom to some of the slaves on the condition that they fight on the side of the British (*4). With these rather significant numbers, I wondered if there were loyalists in my family tree.

Since I have no roots in the southern colonies, nor to my knowledge did any of my ancestors have any slaves, I have none in that classification, despite the individual in (*4) having a last name that is similar to my mother’s Pierpont ancestors.

Nearly all of my ancestors on my mother’s side were in Connecticut at the time, having been there for over 100 years already. Since they had all come to America during the Great Migration of the 1620-1640 period and were primarily of Puritan background, they also had their roots in being in opposition to oppression by the British, so they overwhelmingly were on the side of the American patriots. In fact, not only were some of the leading opponents related to my family, as noted in (*1), but one relative, William Leete, an early governor of Connecticut had shown his opposition as early as the 1660s (*5). I have been unable to find any loyalists among those ancestors, although it’s possible that there were some who opposed taking it to the level of armed resistance during the early stages of the war.

My Russell ancestors had only come to this country a generation earlier in 1750 in the Hudson River valley. As I blogged earlier, my great*5 grandfather, John Russell, was a member of the NY militia and served during the Revolutionary War. So there were no British sympathizers there either. But I still needed to check my wife’s ancestry.

My wife’s mother has two primary lines of ancestry in her lineage. My wife’s maternal grandmother is descended from German immigrants from the 1860s, so they were not in America at the time of the Revolutionary War. And my wife’s maternal grandfather is descended from the same group of individuals in CT and MA as I am (which is why my wife and I are distant cousins - *6) so they were similarly on the side of the Patriots.

But my wife’s father’s ancestors are a different story. As I have documented before (*7), the VanDeCar family were originally Dutch settlers in New Holland in the 1630s. So they did not necessarily have the same attitude toward the British as did the Puritans. And their feelings would have also have been influenced by the takeover of New Holland by the British in the early 1660s. So, what side would they choose?

It appears that most of them chose to side with the patriots. The list of individuals serving in the NY militia includes no fewer than eight men in the Albany militia with the Van Der Kar/Vandekar last name (*8). However, there was one individual, Ruloffe Van De Karr (with many alternate spellings), my wife’s great*5 grandfather, who decided to fight on the side of the British.

Ruloffe was a member of Jessup’s Raiders, a group operating in New York that had loyalty to the British (*9). However, when the war ended a few years later and the British were not the victors, these individuals all migrated to Canada which was still part of the British empire. The British made partial reparations to these men for the land, etc. which they had lost. Roloffe was awarded 360 pounds, 16.3 shillings for his loyalty. The VanDeCar family remained in Canada until around 1840, when they returned to the US, not to New York where their patriot relatives still lived, but to frontier of the newly formed state of Michigan.

It’s easy to look back at history and make decisions in retrospect. But while history is being made, it’s not always as easy. Those who chose to remain loyal to the British probably thought that they were making the right decision at the time. But when things did not go as they thought, it proved very disruptive to their lives. My wife’s ancestors being in Michigan is a direct result of one of those types of decisions.


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1 comment:

  1. Some interesting stories on Grandpa Joe's side of the family.
    https://www.nps.gov/mima/hartwell-tavern.htm

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