The Loyalist Migration: How the American Revolution Reshaped Canada
For a great many English-speaking Canadian families, the family story doesn't start in Canada at all, it starts in the newly independent United States, with an ancestor who chose the losing side.
After the American Revolution ended in 1783, an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 Loyalists, including Black Loyalists, Indigenous allies, and German-speaking Loyalists, left the new United States rather than remain there. Some left because they feared retaliation; others lost property to confiscation, faced open hostility from revolutionary neighbours, or simply couldn't reconcile themselves to life under the new government. Whatever the individual reason, the result was one of the largest single population movements in what would become Canada's early history.
Most Loyalists resettled in what's now Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. The influx was so significant in the Bay of Fundy region that Britain carved out an entirely new colony, New Brunswick, largely to accommodate it. Loyalist settlers received land grants in exchange for their allegiance and their losses, and entire new communities sprang up along rivers and coastlines that had previously been sparsely settled.
This migration left behind one of the best-documented population movements in early Canadian history, which is genuinely good news for anyone researching a Loyalist ancestor. Loyalist claims, applications submitted to the British government seeking compensation for property and losses suffered during the Revolution, often include remarkably detailed personal information: where a family had lived before the war, what they'd owned, their service or support for the Crown, and where they intended to resettle. Land grant records from this era are similarly detailed, since the size and location of a grant were tied directly to a family's wartime service and status.
If your family history includes an ancestor who arrived in Ontario, New Brunswick, or Nova Scotia in the years immediately following 1783, it's well worth investigating whether they came north specifically as a Loyalist. The paper trail, if it exists, tends to be unusually rich, a rare case in genealogical research where a difficult and disruptive historical event actually left behind more documentation, not less.
