Loyalists

There is an ample literature on American Loyalists, much of it produced in the last two decades. An excellent place to start is Wallace Brown's The Good Americans: The Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York: William Merrow, 1969). A listing, standard for a century, is that by Lorenzo Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution with an Historical Sketch (1864; reprinted by Kennikat Press, 1966), 2 vols. That work is being brought up to date in a five-volume set, Biographical Sketches of American Loyalists, by Greg Palmer (New York: Meckler Publishing, 1982). Palmer will include thousands of Loyalists missed by Sabine and in volume 5 will supply an index of names which integrates Sabine's Loyalists with his own list.

Connecticut loyalism and Loyalists have been studied rather fully. The last, best word on the subject is a doctoral dissertation by David Henry Villers, "Loyalism in Connecticut, 1763-1783" (University of Connecticut, 1976). Villers integrates the Loyalist--largely Anglican--experience into Connecticut society and into a narrative of worsening relations between the Colony and the Crown. "Despite harassment of and attacks upon clergymen and parishioners, Anglicans achieved a modus vivendi with Whiggism in their communities by terminating expressions of loyalty to the sovereign. Nevertheless, it was not until after Independence that popular violence--the side of the Revolution that Tories recollected most vividly--significantly abated." (from the abstract) Villers has reported some of his findings in "The British Army and the Connecticut Loyalists during the War of Independence, 1775-1783," CHS Bulletin 43 (July, 1978) 3:65-80.

Several published biographies throw considerable light on the problem of loyalism in Connecticut during the Revolution. An early, excellent work by a master historian is Lawrence H. Gipson's Jared Ingersoll cited above. Bruce Steiner's Samuel Seabury, 1729-1796: A Study in the High Church Tradition (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1972) is a masterful work but not for light reading. Steiner's Bicentennial pamphlet on Anglicanism and Cohen's on Samuel Peters should also be consulted, as should the works on Anglicanism in the "Religion" section of this bibliography. The only Loyalist actually hanged in Connecticut was Moses Dunbar, a biography of whom by Epaphroditus Peck is included in A History of Bristol, Connecticut (Hartford: Lewis Street Book Shop, 1932) and in Eddy N. Smith, et al., Bristol, Connecticut: In Olden Time New Cambridge (Hartford: City Printing Co., 1907), pp. 141-57. Dunbar's brief autobiography appears in Catherine S. Crary, ed., The Price of Loyalty: Tory Writings from the Revolutionary Era (New York, 1973). See also Peck, below. Other works on Loyalists and loyalism:

Bates, Waiter. Kingston and the Loyalists of the "Spring fleet" of A.D. 1783 with Reminiscences of Early Days in Connecticut. St. Johns: New Brunswick, Barnes and Co., 1889). A pro-Peters, pro-loyalist narrative by Walter Bates and the transcript of Sarah Scofield Frost, both of Stamford, this thirty-page pamphlet is an excellent source for the loyalist perspective.

Beach, Rebecca D. "The Redding Loyalists." Papers of the NHCHS 7 (1908):218-36. Beach describes a town in which Loyalists may have outnumbered Patriots. She lists, with notes, the names of forty-nine Loyalists. See also McGrath below.

Brown, Lloyd A. Loyalist Operations at New Haven. Meriden, 1938.

Cameron, Kenneth W., ed. The Church of England in Pre-Revolutionary Connecticut: New Documents and Letters Concerning the Loyalist Clergy and the Plight of Their Surviving Church. Hartford: Transcendentalist Press, 1976. See under "Anglicanism" in the Religion section below.

Dexter, Franklin B. "Notes on Some of the New Haven Loyalists, including those who Graduated at Yale." Papers of the NHCHS 9 (1918):29-45. Biographical sketches of some of the men who applied for compensation for losses sustained during the Revolution: Elihu Hall, John Beach, Abiather Camp, the Chandlers, etc.

Gilbert, G. A. "Connecticut Loyalists." American Historical Review 4 (January, 1899) 2. Long the standard account, this work has been superseded by Villers and Steiner.

Larned, Ellen, ed., "Letter from Joshua Chandler to Rev. Dr. Chauncey." Connecticut Quarterly 1 (1897) 3:271-73. Chandler, who graduated from Yale in 1747, is dealt with in Dexter, above, and Lawson, below. This letter, sent to Chauncey at New Haven about 1784, is long and interesting.

Lawson, Harvey M. "My Country is Wrong--Tragedy of Colonel Joshua Chandler...Driven from Home Wandered with his Family in Exile, and Died Brokenhearted--Story of a Tory." Connecticut Magazine 10 (1906) 2:287-92. Chandler (l728-1787) died when a ship went down on its way to St. Johns, New Brunswick.

McGrath, Stephen, P. “Connecticut's Tory Towns: The Loyalty Struggle in Newtown, Redding, and Ridgefield." CHS Bulletin 44 (July, 1979) 3:88-96. A well researched and well-told story of these three badly divided communities. See also Marc Alfred Mappen's "Anatomy of a Schism: Anglican Dissent in the New England Community of Newtown, Connecticut, 1708-1765." Doctoral dissertation, Rutgers, 1976; and Chester M. Destler. "Newtown in the American Revolution," Connecticut History, January, 1979. Despite its Loyalist population Newtown contributed importantly to supplying Rochambeau’s troops.

Parker, Wyman W. "Recruiting the Prince of Wales Loyalist Regiment from Middletown, Connecticut." CHS Bulletin 47 (January 1982) 1:1-17. Governor Montfort Browne of the Bahamas was captured by Ezek Hopkins, Commander of the American Navy, and sent to Middletown, where he took advantage of his loose confinement to recruit troops by offering shares of his Mississippi lands. Apparently he persuaded hundreds of Connecticut men to enlist in his regiment.

Peck, Epaphroditus. "Loyal to the Crown: Moses Dunbar...Executed for Treason...” and "Discussion of Alleged Inhuman Treatment of Moses Dunbar..." Connecticut Magazine 8 (1903) 1:129-36, 2:297-300. A good piece, with citations, on the only political execution (March 17, 1777) in Connecticut. Dunbar was an Anglican Tory of Wallingford.

--The Loyalists of Connecticut. A competent study, though now outdated, published as pamphlet XXXI by the Tercentenary Commission (1934)

Pond, E. LeRoy. The Tories of Chippeny Hill. New York: Grafton Press, 1909. By an amateur of Bristol, then part of Farmington.

Shepard, James. "The Tories of Connecticut." Connecticut Quarterly 4 (1898) 2:139-51, 257-63. A short, sympathetic piece.

Siebert, Wilbur Henry. “The Refugee Loyalists of Connecticut” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada. 3rd series 10 (June, 1904). An article by the nineteenth-century's foremost authority on American Loyalists, but only eighteen pages long.

Tyler, John W. Connecticut Loyalists: An Analysis of Loyalist Land Confiscations in Greenwich, Stamford, and Norwalk. New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1977. This is only thirty-one pages, but it is a sophisticated work of scholarship. Indeed, it is a model of its genre. Included are a half dozen excellent illustrations and a short digest of statements of claims, by name, of seventy-six Loyalists of the towns named in the title.

Vassar, Rena, ed., "The Aftermath of Revolution: Letters of Anglican Clergymen in Connecticut, 1781-1785," Historical Magazine of Protestant Episcopal Church 41 (1972).

Welton, X. Alanson. "The First Political Disturbances in Connecticut--The Tory Agitation." Connecticut Magazine 12 (1908) 1:113-21. The author was a minister of Tory ancestry. The title indicates his ignorance of Connecticut history, and the article is based on family tradition, the lowest rung on the ladder of evidential credibility.

Willingham, William F. "The Strange Case of Eleazor Fitch: Connecticut Tory.” CHS Bulletin 40 (July, 1975) 3:75-79. Fitch, Yale 1743, was driven from his home town of Windham at the end of the War. "The careful manner in which the Whigs dealt with Fitch reveals much about the political style and methods of the Whigs in Connecticut. His story especially shows how the bonds of community consensus and deferential attitudes dictated the modes of political controversy in eighteenth-century Connecticut" (p.75).

Zeichner, Oscar. "Rehabilitation of the Loyalists in Connecticut." New England Quarterly 11 (June, 1998) 2:308-30. The commercial centers, notably New Haven, welcomed wealthy Loyalists who could contribute to the prosperity of the town. Zeichner wrote the leading study of the coming of the War to Connecticut.

Two relevant articles of interest:

Jarvis, Charles M. "An American's Experience in the British Army: Colonel Steven Jarvis...of Danbury." Connecticut Magazine 11 (1907) 2:215, 3:477-90· This transcript of a war journal kept by Jarvis (b. 1756) contains excellent loyalist material.

White, Herbert H. "British Prisoners of War in Hartford during the Revolution." Papers of the NHCHS 8 (1914):255-76. Tories and military officers, unless they had to live in Newgate prison, could ramble about town and frequent taverns. This was a paper read before the Society in 1913.