Loyalists in the Siege and Evacuation of Boston, with Dr. Patrick G O’Brien (episode 349)

What does it mean to lose your home to a war you hoped would never come? In the popular imagination, the American Revolution is a black and white story of “Good Patriots” versus “Bad British,” but the reality on the streets of occupied Boston was far more gray, hungry, and heartbreaking. By the time the British fleet finally sailed out of the harbor on March 17, 1776, the city was a shell of its former self—a place where residents had been reduced to eating rats and burning their neighbors’ houses for warmth.

Our last episode examined the nearly miraculous American victory at Boston that forced the occupying British troops and Massachusetts residents who sympathized with them to evacuate Boston.  In this episode, co-host emerita Nikki sits down with historian Dr. Patrick G. O’Brien to explore Evacuation Day from the perspective of the Bostonians who later became known as “loyalists.”

From the economic fallout of the Boston Port Act to the shocking sight of British soldiers sleeping in tattered tents on a frozen Boston Common, this conversation explores the human cost of civil war, from the 1774 arrival of thousands of Redcoats to the desperate 10-day scramble of the March 1776 evacuation. From the rocky, fog-drenched shores of Halifax to the lonely streets of London, it’s a story of divided families, broken kinship bonds, and the long, bitter road to reintegration, reminding us that for many, March 17th was not a day of liberation, but a day of profound loss.


Loyalists in the Evacuation of Boston

Dr. Patrick G. O’Brien is a historian of the American Revolution who studies British sympathizing women and families, their experiences as exiles in Nova Scotia, and their return to the United States in the late 18th century.  He is an associate professor of history at the University of Tampa.

 AI Generated Transcript

Chapters

0:13 The Hub of the Universe
2:58 Thank You to Our Supporters
4:45 Welcoming Dr. Patrick G. O’Brien
18:42 Understanding Loyalist Motivations
27:57 Life in Boston During the Siege
30:11 The Arrival of General Washington
36:49 The Brutal Winter of 1775-76
39:36 Planning the Evacuation
41:38 The Experience of Leaving Boston
46:34 The Impact on Enslaved Families
47:45 Arriving in Halifax
54:29 The Refugee Experience in Nova Scotia
57:02 Journeys to New York and Beyond
1:00:15 Reflections on Loyalty and Loss

Jake: [00:00:00] welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. the hub of the universe. This is episode 3 49, loyalists in the Siege and Evacuation of Boston with Dr. Patrick G. O’Brien. Hi, I am Jake, co-host Emerita, and Nikki is gonna be taking the lead again on this episode. If you haven’t been listening recently, Nikki founded the show with me back in 2016. She used to be my co-host every week, but then she left the show in 2019 while she was pursuing her dream job at Old North Illuminated.

I’m working on another podcast project this winter and spring of 2026. She’s coming out of Podcast Retirement for a little while to host some new shows.

If you wanna know more about the other project I’m working on that’s pulling me away a bit from Hub History, go look in the podcast feed for a quick [00:01:00] four minute episode from back in December, 2025, and that’ll tell you a bit more. Now remember in our last episode, I examined the nearly miraculous American victory at Boston that forced the occupying British troops and those Massachusetts residents who sympathized with them to evacuate Boston on March 17th, 1775.

In this episode Nikki sits down with Dr. O’Brien to explore evacuation day from the perspective of those Bostonians who later became known as loyalists. What does it mean to lose your home in a war that you hoped would never come in the popular imagination, the American Revolution is a black and white story of good patriots versus bad British. But the reality on the streets of occupied Boston was far more gray, hungry, and at times heartbreaking. By the time the British fleet finally [00:02:00] sailed out of the harbor on March 17th, 1776, the city was a shell of its former self, a place where residents have been reduced to eating rats and burning their neighbor’s homes for warmth from the economic fallout of the Boston Port Act to the shocking site of British soldiers sleeping in tattered tents on a frozen Boston common. This conversation explores the human cost of a civil war from the 1774 arrival of thousands of red coats to the desperate 10 day scramble of the March, 1776 evacuation from the rocky and fog drenched shores of Halifax to the lonely streets of London. It’s a story of divided families, broken kinship bonds, and the long bitter road to reintegration, reminding us that for many March 17th was not a day of liberation. But one of profound loss.

But before Nikki joins us [00:03:00] to talk about the loyalist experience of evacuation day, I just wanna pause and say thank you to everybody who supports Hub History financially. As you might imagine, I love listening to podcasts, whether it’s serious local history from cities around the country, the TV recaps or podcasts about podcasting to help me be a better podcaster.

Whatever your interests, there’s probably a podcast about it, and if there’s not one, well, you should go start it. your that’s what Nikki and I did in 2016 when we realized that there wasn’t already a podcast about Boston history.

I can help if you do. I can help are great because they’re free to listen to, but unfortunately they’re not exactly free to create. We have expenses like podcast, media hosting, web hosting and security, online audio processing tools and automated transcription, [00:04:00] and of course the hardware, that I use for recording like this brand new laptop. I just had to buy

supporters, make it possible for me to focus on creating a show without having to worry about where that money’s gonna come from. It’s a one time contribution on PayPal or an ongoing contribution of $2 $5, or even $20 or more on a monthly basis. Our listeners make this show possible to everybody who’s already supporting the show.

Thank you. If you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, it’s easy. Just go to patreon.com/hub history or visit hub history.com and click on the support us link. And thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.

now we’re gonna welcome Dr. Patrick G. O’Brien. Dr. O’Brien is a historian of the American Revolution who studies British sympathizing women and families, their experiences as [00:05:00] exiles in Nova Scotia, return to the United States in the late 18th century. He’s an associate professor of history at the University of Tampa. Alright, at this point I’ll turn the mic over to Nikki and she can take it away.

Nikki: Patrick, thank you so much for joining the show today. I’m really excited to talk about the siege and the evacuation with you.

Patrick: Thank you for having me. It is really great to be here. I’m an avid listener, so it’s fun to contribute.

Nikki: I was thinking about where to start our conversation today, and it feels Boston history really starts to pick up around 1770, right? And then we’re kind of barreling into the revolution at that point. And I looked up some data points and saw that in 1770, the population of Boston is just under 16,000.

And by June of 1775, the population has dropped to just over [00:06:00] 2,700. Both of those numbers, not counting soldiers, talking about civilians here in Boston. Can you just walk our listeners through quickly what happened in that time? Give us the highlights in kind of the order of how they occurred.

Patrick: I think that it’s, it’s really important to think about the effects of the Boston Tea Party in December of 1773 as being responsible for a lot of this movement of people both in and out of Boston. That’s gonna occur throughout 1770. N 1775. So I’m sure a lot of listeners are familiar with the very famous Boston Tea Party.

Probably visited the Boston Tea Party Museum, dumped tea into the harbor. But that has really dramatic ramifications for the city of Boston because of the ensuing coercive acts that are passed by the British Parliament later dubbed by American Scholars as the intolerable acts in the 19th century. They were [00:07:00] designed to do a variety of different things, but to summarize them as a whole, it was to punish the city of Boston for the destruction of the government’s property and the tea until that had been repaid and. The arrival of Thomas Gage into Boston in May of 1774 with 2000 troops kind of signals how serious the British government is about these changes of the intolerable acts.

The Boston Port Act is going to be really significant for the merchant class, for the working class of Boston because it effectively closes the Port of Boston trade into and out of Boston is going to be prohibited and enforced by the British Navy. So this means merchants who are bringing their goods and unloading them on long wharf and the other wharfs of Boston no longer are able to do that. And it means that the dock workers who are the people who are actually doing the physical unloading of the ships and a variety of [00:08:00] other maintenance on ships and everything from providing for sailors and tavern owners who provided for sailors, lodgings, these type of things. All of these people’s businesses are dramatically undercut by the Boston Port Act, and that’s gonna be responsible for bringing a lot of people out of the city of Boston.

If you wanted, if you are a laborer and you’re reliant upon unloading ships, you have to leave Boston to continue to make your livelihood. You can go to some of the other surrounding towns in the region. You could relocate even further away to some of the other big ports in North America, which some laborers do. But you have to leave Boston. There’s no way to kind of provide for yourself in Boston so long as the Boston Port is closed. So the Port Act is gonna be responsible for moving a lot of people. Out of Boston. Others like families, some more wealthy families, better off families, are also gonna start leaving Boston because of the arrival of those troops, right?

You have 2000 soldiers coming with Thomas Gage. You have another 3000 that he’s gonna [00:09:00] order removed from Halifax, Nova Scotia and placed in Boston. So that means you’re gonna have about 5,000 soldiers. In the summer of 1774 in the city of Boston, soldiers had been unpopular since the Boston Massacre at the turn of the decade.

And so the arrival of these troops also signals to those who are a little bit better off that maybe it’s time to remove our families to the country. Estates like, let’s get out of the city of Boston while these soldiers are here. We know that these can lead to violence. I mean, we don’t have to look too far away to see what happens when you put armed. Individuals in the proximity of local civilians who are not particularly fond of armed individuals. So a lot of the better off families are able to kind of remove themselves. So you have this like kind of outflow of two different groups of people, right? Better off. And then those who are just reliant on work, who have to leave Boston ’cause there is none. Another important part of this story though, is you also have an influx of people into Boston in 1774, late in the year, because once again, those British troops are there [00:10:00] and they provide protection. So perhaps one of the best examples of this happens in early September, on September 1st. Gauge orders, troops out of Boston to neighboring Somerville to capture a Powder depot to take ammunition from Somerville and, and bring it back to Boston. And they’re successful in doing this. But news spreads very quickly of these troops on the move and that they’re armed. And as news travels, the reports get kind of more and more exaggerated by the time they reach Connecticut and New Hampshire. The story is that. The British Navy has opened fire on the city of Boston, and that, that there are buildings burning in Boston.

And so Minutemen rush to, to the region in order to kind of respond to this type of attack, only to get there and find out that Gae and his troops were already back. The, the, the ammunitions taken. Boston is not burning and. I think probably because they’ve left and they were excited, they’re not gonna go home kind of empty handed.

A number of them famously surround the home of a prominent lawyer in [00:11:00] Cambridge, Jonathan Sewell, who’s also the Massachusetts Attorney General, and they surround his home and they break his windows, and his wife and his children are home. He’s actually at court in Boston, so he’s not there. His wife and his children are home. His wife is only able to disperse them by giving them the contents of his liquor cabinet, right? He has to open up his wine cellar and, and give out the liquor in order to disperse this crowd. And interestingly, the newspapers depicted as like only a couple ruffians, right? Like it’s unemployed men who are doing this, but Jonathan Sewell’s own accounts is no, this is everybody.

The people who came are the people who surrounded my home. So there’s a little bit of discrepancy about who’s doing this, but in the wake of it, Jonathan Sewell’s I gotta get my family outta here. It’s the countryside that’s dangerous for a loyalist like him and it’s Boston that’s safe. And there’s a variety of other kind of British sympathizers, although, you could never really use the term loyalist yet ’cause they’re not a divide. But people who are seen as sympathetic to the British government, people who are on the side of Gage, people who are getting kind of patronage from [00:12:00] Gage like Sewell, they become targets. And so he leaves the countryside and goes into Boston. So this is obviously a much, much smaller number because you have more people leaving Boston than coming in. But you do have people like Jonathan Sewell who are gonna remove into Boston for the protection of the British Army. So this is going on during 1774.

I mean, you know that. Very narrow land crossing into Boston in, in 1774. But you have people crossing the neck, you have people coming in by boat from the surrounding areas as well as leaving. So you have this kind of like great migration in and out of Boston throughout 1774 that creates that population discrepancy that you’re describing.

Nikki: I looked up some of the numbers and I calculated. That by the end of 1774 the military presence is making up about 23% of the population in Boston. So, one way to think about that is one in five people [00:13:00] is a soldier. But I looked at census data for 2024 and calculated that the equivalent would be actually more than 150,000 troops arriving in Boston this year. If we were to experience that same kind of population shift, it would be over 150,000, which is, I think, just unfathomable to consider. And, there can be a, a, a valid debate, I would say, does military presence make you feel more safe or does it feel dangerous? People. People today think about do, does a police presence make you feel safer or does it make things feel more dangerous? But it’s hard to argue with that influx of 150,000 troops today. I think most of us would say that feels

crazy.

Patrick: Yeah, it was staggering. And, and the newspapers across America are reprinting this because it is so staggering and it is so astonishing [00:14:00] that even newspapers that are kind of more sympathetic to the British cause are, are, are skeptical of whether this is a good move on the part of the, the royal government, right?

Does it make sense to send that many troops to a city where, don’t forget there had been a history of conflict between working class people in particular and, and the military. So, even newspapers in Charleston and New York are, are somewhat skeptical of the move and the British government of, of moving these these troops into Boston.

Nikki: Hmm. So before we move into 1775, I wanna just take a pause here and talk a little bit about the Patriots loyalist spectrum, if you will. A lot of our visitors arrive at Old North, surprised to learn that this was not a Patriot congregation. Because we are the home of those famous lantern signals.

That is the assumption, and we always say it’s important to consider. The real spectrum of political belief, just [00:15:00] like we have a full spectrum today. They did as well. We say that everyone really was a loyalist until they weren’t right. That, moving from the status quo to a change, you move from loyalist to patriot. And the way that we learn history, the way that we’re taught about the rev revolution in elementary school, like we’re all taught to identify with the Patriots. So Patriots are good, loyalists are bad, and obviously it’s much more complicated than that. You’ve talked a little bit about how the way that you earn your livelihood would influence your political beliefs. And here at Old North we talk about how religion might influence your political beliefs. If you’re a member of the Church of England or a congregant of the Church of England your loyalty is, is to the king. I think our visitors also assume that loyalists were generally wealthy. And we know that that’s not quite true.

So again, before we move [00:16:00] into 1775, could you just talk a little bit about, what would make someone a loyalist? Let, this is your opportunity, I think, to, to defend the loyalist cause and help our listeners be sympathetic to them, because that’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about really the loyalist experience of these turbulent years.

Patrick: So I think the way to start this conversation off is that the term loyalist is anachronistic, right? They only use this term to describe themselves later in the war. And when the war is over, they invent the term to get compensation from the British government, right? It’s. When they’re applying to be compensated for what they had lost, that these refugees begin referring to themselves as a collective, as loyalists.

What defines them, it’s their loyalty to England, right? That they invent earlier in the war, they’re referred to as Tories to make a connection to British politics [00:17:00] and support of, of the Tory party, which is also misleading. So I think the thing that you have to recognize about the loyalists, right?

I’m putting that in scare quotes, the loyalists is that there are incredibly diverse group that. Don’t even necessarily share a political allegiance of loyalty, that is, that’s kind of misleading and created after the war. They come from a variety of backgrounds, as you noted, there are really prominent figures who are loyalists, right?

You have really wealthy merchants whose trade and connections to other merchants in London and throughout the empire is the reason they have generated such wealth. So you have them who are allegiant to the empire because they know that it’s. The safest route to kind of continuing to be affluent. You have, as you mentioned in Old North Mathers Biles Jr. Who was a congregationalist to begin his life, but then is an Anglican clergy member who owes his allegiance to the King of England through a [00:18:00] religious prism. So a number of members of Old North Congregation also have that religious prism for loyalty to view allegiance through. You also have a variety of different people from different backgrounds, from wealthy to middling to poorer, who simply believe that the devil they know that is the British empire that they have qualms with, right? Because you have to remember that a lot of these loyalists are critical of the empire, and it’s changing. Approach to the colonies after 1763. People who go on to be prominent loyalists are in 1765 complaining about the stamp Act and complaining about other acts like they take part in protests. Loyalists will, will some of them boycott British goods. I mean like there’s no defining them from their patriot counterparts in the 1760s and early 1770s. But by the time that protests are becoming more violence and talk of war or armed conflict becomes more common. Like not necessarily independence yet, right? ’cause that’s still a [00:19:00] ways to go. But talk of armed conflict. They think the devil, they know the British Empire. Is a safer bet for just their livelihoods, their safety, their, their own wellbeing than the Patriot cause.

So the devil they know is better than the devil. They don’t, especially because the Patriots come from a variety of different backgrounds and have different views on what armed conflict means. Like what does the, what does the end game here is very complicated for loyalists who don’t necessarily think that they have the right ideas.

So really the loyalists or the Tories early in the war, they come from all different backgrounds. Some of them very, very critical of the British Empire and a number, including a family that I study. They’re, they’re from Marblehead, Massachusetts. The father of the family, the, the patriarch, he is critical of the British Empire and kind of gets labeled a Tory as opposed to actually espousing any loyalist beliefs himself.

So there are people who also just get. Picked as Tori oh, you have a successful business. You have relations in the British [00:20:00] government, thus you must be a Tory. Even if everything you say and you publish in the newspaper is trying to walk that back. Explain that you, oh, I understand why you think I’m a Tory or a loyalist, but I’m really not.

I’m, I’m just kind of, I’m in between, I’m trying to be neutral. In times of civil conflict. Neutrality is probably the hardest allegiance to maintain. At least in, in perception.

Nikki: Then we move into the events in early 1775, which, I have to say, this is where Old North Shines, right? This is where we get our moment in the spotlight or the lantern light, if you will. We know that movement is being monitored very closely. Which is why Revere has to develop the lantern signal method in case he’s captured on the way out of town. So, what’s it like to be living in Boston at this time?

We’re not into the siege yet, right? Like the lantern signals, Lexington and Concord. That hasn’t happened yet, but people know that we’re moving in that direction. [00:21:00] So what’s it like and, and how are people moving around the region once we get into 1775?

Patrick: I I spoke at Old North back in the fall about the book Johnny Tremaine, and I bring it up here because I think Ter Forbes actually perfectly captures what the situation was like in Boston, in this pre Lexington and Concord moment in 1775. And that’s to say tense. Both sides. That is those who are sympathetic to the British government engage and those who are beginning to prepare for more serious conflict are cognizant that a small spark could start a bigger, bigger conflict.

That, that something minor could erupt into something much more serious. And that’s where, I mean, the Committee of Correspondence networks that are created are, are vital in like spreading news. That’s where the kind of the surveillance of British troops I wouldn’t necessarily call [00:22:00] it spying, but like trying to gather intelligence from inside the British camp about what Gage is planning, what kind of directions he’s receiving from across the Atlantic is going on on the, the Patriot side and then vice versa.

The British are, are really cognizant of people coming in and out of Boston, right? I mean, the neck is being heavily monitored. People coming in and out are being not necessarily accosted, but there are British centuries there who are, are making sure that there’s not kind of the movement of dangerous persons in or out of Boston that, news isn’t traveling in or out of Boston that the British government wouldn’t want. Transmitted. So things are really tense in the spring of 1775. And again, we’ve had this, big population change. So a lot of the people in Boston are actually sympathetic by this point to the British government. That’s why they’re there. Like they’re seeking refuge amongst these troops. The troops are another group of people to think about. Don’t forget that these are 5,000 men from [00:23:00] across the Atlantic. A lot of them from non-elite backgrounds, right? The officers from elite backgrounds, but the just regular enlisted men from a variety of different walks of life in, in England and from, from what’s now Ireland. And they’re not particularly happy to be in North America.

The winters are brutal. Like we can talk about this when we get to the winter of 75, 76, but they’re gonna really suffer then. They’re living in kind of makeshift. Tents on the Boston Common, for example, some of them can find lodgings in homes. We know that they, many of them have families with them or have begun to kind of create new relations amongst the people of Boston. So there’s this kind of new community developing amongst soldiers and the citizens who are in Boston at the time. So, things are definitely on edge in the spring of 1775 because of all the dramatic change, like so much is occurring, so much is going on that both sides are correct in, in assuming that something small could start something much, much bigger.

Nikki: We had a [00:24:00] episode in late April last year that was specifically about the deal that was struck in April and May of 1775 to allow residents to leave Boston and to allow others to come in. And we’ll link to that in the show notes, but can you just give a little overview about how that kind of moves our story forward today?

Patrick: So at this point, Lexington, Lexington and Concord have occurred. And so you have Minutemen, you have these militia men from around the New England area who have surrounded the city of, of Boston. So you have the beginning of what’s gonna be the siege. And during that time, the people in the city are extraordinarily anxious about what this means for them. Remember that this is a civil conflict. I mean, this is a civil war. This is Britain against Britain. So defining who is our friend and who is our enemy is very difficult for both the militia men surrounding Boston and the British government within Boston, [00:25:00] right? General Gage and his men. So it’s actually in gage’s. Prerogative, like he takes the prerogative here. It’s in his best interests to kind of organize this deal with the people who have surrounded him to allow the movement of people in and out of Boston so that like both sides can try to get on their side, the people who want to be there. That Gage does not want people sympathetic to the American cause in Boston, right?

Because they’re kind of this dangerous enemy within, they could start fires they could send signals to the Americans outside, they could ferry, Americans across secretly. So Gage is really worried about kind of an internal enemy in Boston. So he wants to make sure that he can get those people out of Boston, the people who want to leave, let’s get them to go. And vice versa. In the American countryside the militia men are worried about. People possibly taking up arms against them. Now they know they have them outnumbered, right? Like they’re not worried about a large contingent of loyalists kind somehow, like uprooting them from [00:26:00] surrounding Boston. But nonetheless, they’re worried that like small acts of violence could be destabilizing for them, and perhaps they could also collaborate with the British government in Boston through the passing of intelligence and, and signaling and things.

So it’s in the, it’s in the best interest of both sides to allow this movement of people. And the other thing that Gage in particular has to worry about in Boston and eventually how who will take his place, is that you don’t want a large number of dependents. What they know from the beginning is that if the sieges drags on feeding housing, providing medicine for the civilians and the the soldier population of Boston is going to be extremely challenging. And so one thing that Gage wants to do is get kind of non-combatants out of Boston to reduce the financial burden that he’s gonna bear from, from feeding these people, from making sure these people remain healthy, which is also incredibly important [00:27:00] because they know from siege warfare that smallpox is incredibly common.

Other really infectious diseases as people get sick and are without housing, the last thing that any of them need is a smallpox outbreak in Boston that would infect troops. So moving these people in and out is in both sides. Best interests.

Nikki: I’m just listening to all this. I, I always try to help our visitors understand how much uncertainty people were living in, in this time. And again, today we think it’s so clear. I would’ve been a patriot, or I don’t think anybody really fervently says I would’ve been a loyalist. But my goodness, they’re living in so much uncertainty and having to make decisions about what’s best for their families with no idea what’s coming.

Like I think it’s, it’s overwhelming to think about what it must have been like to be living in Boston during the siege.

Patrick: Absolutely [00:28:00] Nikki. I think that’s a great point. And it’s also, when we read about the donation people, right? These people who are, are poor in Boston and they’re gonna be removed to the countryside. And then the towns of of Bos of the Greater Boston area and greater Massachusetts are gonna take up quotas of, refugees to take in from, from Boston.

And many of those towns take in more refugees than the quotas that they were assigned. I think that’s the other thing that’s really remarkable about this story is it’s not just the families who are, like you noted, making decisions on outcomes they don’t know, right? I mean, we know how the Siege of Boston turns out and the American Revolution more broadly, but they don’t it’s also, the surrounding talents, people who are, really having to make complex decisions about how are we gonna provide. For these people because they’re being affected by the siege too, right? They’ve been greatly affected by the Boston Port Act and by the intolerable acts. So providing for these refugees who are streaming out of Boston was also really taxing on local town governments. And there’s [00:29:00] pushback in some places to taking refugees from Boston because there’s also that fear of who are these people?

There is Massachusetts much smaller than it is today, so there was kind of more familiarity with people. But at the same time, they’re strangers, they’re foreigners, right? They’re people from Boston who share maybe some things in common, but others. So there’s, there’s so much complexity.

I think you perfectly explained that, and so much uncertainty that it makes everything about the situation really complicated.

Nikki: Yeah. And just people have to go through it without their normal support systems. Here at Old North, the the congregation essentially goes dormant after the lantern signal. So when I just think about our community here at Old North, they’re on their own, right? They don’t have their faith community their families are split up, right?

They’re, it’s just a really tough emotional time. So I think for our narrative today, let’s just blow right past the Battle of Bunker Hill, right? Huge [00:30:00] event. Lots of resources about it. So that happens in June of 1775, and then Washington arrives in July. What, what is the state of the army that he finds?

Patrick: Yeah, Washington has been told by John Adams actually that the men he’s going to encounter outside of Boston are, I think the exact quote is ferocious as lions and going to be great soldiers and, and ready to win this war. But Washington finds anything but that. He’s in, he’s particularly perturbed that the people surrounding the militia men have not dug latrines and are just kind of relieving themselves wherever they feel like it.

And Washington as a military man knows how problematic this can be. So the vast majority of the militia, not all of them, but the vast majority of militia is untrained, unprepared. It’s not what Washington was led to believe. He also can’t actually figure out how many men he has. One of the first things that he tries to do is, count up how many men he has.

He sends these orders out and he [00:31:00] can’t get. Accurate numbers, which is incredibly frustrating to someone like Washington who uses some really explicit language in in closed doors to the group of people that he’s kind of ordering around about trying to professionalize this army. So the army is definitely ragtag.

He’s only impressed with a couple of people Henry Knox and Nathaniel Green, and who will be with him at the end of the war. By the way, the only people from, from that point to the end of the war are those two. He’s only impressed with those two. Everyone else he is really unimpressed with. So, the army is, is in a ragtag shape, although the Battle of Bunker Hill, and I’m glad we’re blowing by it, ’cause like you noted just way, way a lot to get into there, the battle of Bunker Hill, which Washington wasn’t around for. Does serve in Washington’s mind as like a way to win the war. It’s not a victory for the Americans. It’s a pure victory for the British, and Washington is convinced if he can get him to do it again in Boston, that he could possibly win the war, or at least the early battles of it.

Nikki: So during the summer of 1775, Washington arrives, he’s assessing the [00:32:00] troops, but what’s it like for civilians at that time?

Patrick: Things in Boston are really bad in the summer of 1775 and just to put it out there, going to get worse in the winter of 1775, winter of 1776. In Boston, you have a real scarcity, first of all, of food. Of provisions for the people and the soldiers of Boston. Both groups are going to suffer greatly because of a lack of available food and nourishment. And the descriptions of this are really jarring. There are civilians in Boston who describe carcasses, like dead animals in the street that normally would be cleaned up and, and disposed of that are, are picked up off the street and then sold for exorbitant prices as meat for people to consume.

So everything from like horses to dogs and cats are being sold at really high prices not just for free or, or given away. They’re sold to high prices for people who [00:33:00] have the money to pay for these type of things. You have a story of one officer’s horse, British officer’s horse that’s stolen and slaughtered and then used for meat. It’s unclear who does this, if it’s soldiers or if it’s civilians in Boston. But that’s, a really kind of appalled story that gets out about the type of, of hunger that exists in Boston. Another selectman from Boston. So this is someone who comes from a, a pretty high background, is gonna describe being served rat for dinner at a meeting of gentlemen. So, the stories about the scarcity of, of food in Boston is definitely one of the most prominent. Parts of the summer of 1775 for the people who are there. It’s also important to remember that there’s a lot of sickness and eventually Gage is gonna have some of the sickest men, women, and children, about 300 taken out of Boston during this time.

But there’s rampant health concerns among both soldiers

and the civilian population. There is small smallpox outbreak [00:34:00] that occurs in Boston. There’s measles, there’s just other diseases because of hunger and malnutrition that are going to spread. It’s estimated that somewhere between 10 and 30 funerals a day

Nikki: Wow.

Patrick: the height of this Yeah. In Boston and. Even more staggering about that? Is that how, or by this point, yes. William Howe has replaced General Gage and Howe will not allow the bells of Boston to be rung for these funerals, which was customary. He won’t allow them to be rung because it would be a signal to the Americans outside of Boston about kind of like the hunger installation that’s occurring there.

So yeah, estimated between 10 and 30 funerals a day. Jonathan Sewell, that same individual who escaped to Boston back in September of 1774, he describes, he, he’s, he’ll use kind of like joking language but it’s really kind of macabre is he describes meeting quote, more dead folks than live ones in the summer of [00:35:00] 1775. There’s also just kind of other. Accidents that occur, that contribute to this. Jonathan Swol describes a man who’s repairing his roof that was damaged perhaps in the battle of Bunker Hill or some sort of fallout afterwards. He’s repairing his roof and he falls off of it and he is killed that way.

So this is just kind of all these other things that are going on, contributing to the. The mortality that’s occurring in the city of Boston. Nathaniel Green, who is outside of Boston, is receiving deserters from the British Army, right? There are a number of enlisted men who are gonna leave Boston of course against, against the law.

And again, Esther Forbes covers this, and Johnny Tremaine the character, pumpkin, is gonna try to desert the British army and then is executed because he’s caught. But Deserters will take great risk to get out of the city of Boston and get to the, the rebel lines, and they’ll describe the, the rampant poverty and disease and hunger.

Nathaniel Green’s quote is great. Violence is done to the cause of humanity in that town in the summer of [00:36:00] 1775, about kind of the destitution that’s going on in the city. And it’s actually during this time, if, if listeners wanna look this up, you can read it. It’s open access in a variety of different places. But Jonathan Sewell writes this humorous play called A Cure for the Spleen, where he basically tries to describe why people would be patriots and why people would be loyalists, right? This is an early description of like, why did I choose this side, and why did they choose that side? But what’s going on in that play is actually about the, the hunger and starvation that’s going on in Boston, right?

He sees that like the Patriot cause is causing this widespread hardship and asks like, how could something that’s causing so much pain be beneficial?

Nikki: Hmm.

Patrick: Like this is, this is the result of rebellion is basically his, his answer we had a good system, and now we’ve, we’ve caused this, this horrible situation.

Nikki: So let’s roll into fall of 1775, the winter into [00:37:00] 1776. We’re not, we’re headed toward evacuation day, but what? That’s gotta be a brutal winter. What’s that like?

Patrick: Yeah, the winter is particularly bad and we know this mostly because of the writings of British soldiers. I think one that resonates with me when I read it every time is there’s a British soldier who’s describing the tent that he lives in, and this tent is on Boston Common. If you’ve been on Boston Common, I know. I’m here in Florida, but I know the people up there in Boston had a particularly tough winter and big storms recently, if you were out on Boston Common during one of those big storms, it’s not particularly sheltered even today when there’s these buildings that surround it. It was more exposed in the 18th century. So he lives in a tent on Boston Common, and it is riddled with holes. He describes that there’s actually like more missing material from his tent than material that still remains and describes it being more comfortable to sleep outside of the tent [00:38:00] than in it during the cold of the Boston winter. And again, remembering that most of these soldiers are not accustomed to a New England winter. The winters on the other side of the Atlantic from the places that they come are far more mild. And so for many of them, this is the first time they’re experiencing something this dramatic. And the hunger only makes this kind of cold worse. They begin tearing down old homes and barns to create firewood. Which is also problematic because they need places to live. So, I mean, imagine the decision to tear down an old home, which provides some shelter in order to burn it. I mean, that’s like a real hobson’s choice, it’s a lose lose in this type of situation. So, soldiers are describing this. They pull down barns they begin burning pretty much anything they can get their hands on, they’ll cut down the liberty tree and burn that, which doesn’t sit well with the Patriots when they find that out. So there’s a real, real suffering going on in Boston during the winter of 75.

75 into 76, and it’s late, late, late in 1775, [00:39:00] that General Howe begins recognizing that they’re not gonna be able to hold Boston. He begins making plans to take the British Army out of Boston. It becomes obvious to him, and he is getting instructions from across the Atlantic that holding Boston is untenable, right?

This is something he’s not going to be able to do. So news starts traveling from Boston to British officials in Nova Scotia, which is the closest kind of British military fortification that they, they still hold very strongly that there’s probably going to be a movement of everyone or a majority of the people out of Boston and to Halifax on the south shore of Nova Scotia. So it’s, it’s late in 1775 that how is gonna start to kind of develop the plan to remove from, it’s not clear when he is going to do it or if, if he’s going to do it, but the plan begins to be developed in late 1775 to take the army and civilians right out of Boston and to Nova Scotia. And this evacuation is massive, right? Again, [00:40:00] Abigail Adams is going to describe this in her letters.

She calls it the largest fleet ever assembled in the Americas. There’s upwards of a hundred. And 20 ships. Aga Adams writes even north of that that are in the Boston Harbor and then are going to be departing on March 17th, beginning very early in the morning and through the rest of the day sailing out of the harbor.

So this is a massive evacuation and it’s also done fairly quickly. I think that’s a, a part of the story that’s like important to remember is that even though how had kind of developed this idea that like this might have to happen in late 1775, it’s only in the, early weeks of March that it becomes obvious that after March 5th that it’s going to happen.

So we’re talking about 10 days right, to plan this evacuation and even less than that of the city. Boston. So that includes all of the troops, it includes the materials that they need, right? They don’t wanna leave anything that the Americans, they’re not gonna burn the city, but they’re not gonna leave the implements of war that could be used by Americans.

So [00:41:00] again, Abigail Adams describes she can witness, things being tossed into Charles River and Boston Harbor, kind of to destroy them and make them not useful for the Americans. And to get the civilians out, right? Telling the, the general population that like, we’re leaving, and for those of you who want to come with us, which some of them do, right?

Some of them have been told that they’re not gonna be offered amnesty, right? There is this promise of amnesty for people who put down their weapons earlier, but there’s names on that of people who will not be given amnesty, right? And so there’s the group of people who like, have to leave. This is their only choice, and others who just think it’s the best option.

So this is a mammoth undertaking that has to be done really, really quickly. And actually it is done fairly well, right? It’s organized, the evacuation occurs without tremendous loss to the British military.

Nikki: Is there an example you can give of someone who was on that list and had to leave, and what did that process look like for them? What, what does it mean to upend your life in 10 days?

Patrick: So. [00:42:00] Just because I’ve mentioned him already, I guess it’s worth going into Jonathan Sewell the last Attorney General. He is, and he’s acting secretary to Gage, so he’s very unpopular. And he had been rumored to be the author of letters that had been published previous that supported the British government so widely unpopular. His name is on that list, right? He’s someone who’s not gonna be offered amnesty. And by the way, lest you think that this is just the Americans doing it, the British do it too, right? The British offer to okay, you’ve taken up arms at Lexington and Concord, but if you put down your weapons, we’ll offer amnesty to everyone except for John Adams.

I believe Hancock’s name is on there too, right? There’s, there’s certain people who do not have amnesty but Jonathan Sewell’s name is on the list that the Americans provide. So he’s someone who knows he has to leave. He actually does it much earlier than March, right? That suffering over the summer of 1775 is got him convinced that this is not the answer.

He does not want to experience the winter there, and his plan is actually to go to Halifax. Earlier, his cousin Thomas Roby from Marblehead had evacuated in immediate weeks after Lexington conquered and gone to Halifax to [00:43:00] kind of scope it out for his cousin. Jonathan Sewell was also. The Vice Admiralty court at Halifax, he was on that. So he had been there previously or actually had sent an aide to see Halifax previously. And he’s getting reports from his cousin about what life is like there, can I remove with my family? He has children, he has a wife, he has enslaved people. Like he’s thinking about bringing them and he gets news that there’s smallpox in Halifax that had come with some of the earlier loyalists who had left.

So he chooses not to go to Nova Scotia and instead removes to London. So he’s a really good example. He has wealth, so that removal to London is something he can afford. Other people below him, their names aren’t on the list of people, but they don’t have that kind of same option. The removal to London is expensive.

People without connections on the other side of the Atlantic don’t have the same type of kind of reassurance that they can be provided for. So a lot of those people stick it out all the way to March 17th, and then when the Army’s leaving, their choices are like, stay and see what happens. Which again, as you mentioned, is [00:44:00] uncertain. How much faith do you have in these rebels who have surrounded Boston and been fine with people in Boston starving. I mean, that’s a difficult decision to make. I

Nikki: And you know those people, right? That’s the thing is, is you’re thinking. Will my former neighbors be merciful?

Will my distant relatives be merciful? Like it? I, I think we come back to this, the small size of the population, that there’s all this uncertainty there, like interpersonal relationships.

It’s not strangers that

you are trying to navigate.

Patrick: And at Old North, you know this because Mathers Biles Jr. Will leave to go to Nova Scotia to go north, but his father, Mather Biles Sr. Who is also a Tory, will choose to stay. So like families are being divided amongst this. And Mather’s bio Sr is then confined to his home, right? He calls it an observatory.

He was very witty. I love that observatory as in like observatory. So he’ll describe it as that. [00:45:00] ’cause he, he’s under house arrest, but basically he’ll find, and a lot of the others who stay. That the Americans who come then to occupy Boston are not as vengeful as they could have been. There aren’t widespread stories of violence enacted against the victories who remain in Boston. In fact, the, I think as Nathaniel Green’s quote, kind of demonstrates there is some sympathy amongst the, the Patriots surrounding Boston about the people who are suffering in it. Like maybe they’ve suffered enough. Now the, really affluent ones won’t have their property restored to them.

The confiscation acts will later take place that of people who left. And so, they’re not entirely lenient on people who picked the opposite side of them, but they’re not going to erect gallows. There’s no kind of real vengeful actions of violence against any of these people.

Nikki: Yeah, but they didn’t know that.

Patrick: No.

Nikki: Know. And speaking of Mather Biles Jr. I think it’s also significant that. Many of the wealthier folks who left to [00:46:00] Halifax moved their enslaved people with them. And in, in the case of Mather Biles Mather Biles Jr. He separates a family, right?

He takes Cato, a man that he enslaves with him. Cato’s family stays behind in Roxbury.

And we were pretty certain that Cato never is reunited with his family again. And I, I think we found that, at least here at Old North for our visitors, talking about the separation of enslaved families is a really powerful way to think about what it means to be enslaved, right?

To have no control, to have no control over, keeping your, your wife and your children with you. It’s, It’s, just a, another horror that I think has to be mentioned as we talk about what the evacuation meant for people.

Patrick: And Cato’s story is not exceptional, right? This is actually the norm for the loyalist diaspora to separate enslaved [00:47:00] families, the family. I study the Roby family of Marblehead, Massachusetts.

When they leave Marblehead, they take a young woman who is not named a, a girl with them as an enslaved person to Halifax while her mother remained in in Marblehead still enslaved named Flora. And it’s only after Flora gets her freedom upon the death of her master that she actually does remove to Nova Scotia to return to slavery, but reunite with the daughter briefly. So, there are remarkable stories of enslaved people who have to experience this. Some like Cato, who don’t see their families again, and others who go to exceptional lengths to restore the kinship bonds that were destroyed by the revolution. So, I mean, it’s these stories that I think are some of the most powerful from this era.

If we’re gonna talk about, people fighting for freedom, it’s, those type of stories are, are perhaps the most intriguing.

Nikki: Hmm. So what’s it like when the troops and loyalist civilians get to Halifax? What, what do they find there?

Patrick: So it’s important to remember that Halifax and [00:48:00] Boston are very different. I think today if a lot of listeners perhaps have visited Halifax, Nova Scotia, it’s not far. You can get there easily from Maine. You can catch a flight from Boston. If you live in Boston. Your Christmas tree comes from Lunberg County, comes from,

Halifax, Nova Scotia after the people of Boston aided in the First World War and the explosion that decimated the town. But in the 18th century. Halifax and Boston are, are intimately related. Their histories are, are directly connected, but they are very, very different. Halifax is one of the only places in British North America that is founded by the expense of the government to be a military base, right? That is its goal.

It’s founded in 1749 and it’s founded to offset the French presence at l at Lewisburg, right? So Halifax is created to be a center for the Navy in the North Atlantic. And it remains that through the second World War, right? That is what Halifax is. An importance in the region is. So that means [00:49:00] that from a very early stage, the city of Halifax is reliant upon funds coming from England, right?

It’s reliant upon the Navy. So where the British people. Of Colonial Boston don’t like the presence of red coats that come in 1770 and then again in 1774 and 1775. The opposite is true of the people of Halifax. They’re reliant upon soldiers and sailors for their livelihood. The earliest English settlers of Halifax are able, some of them, to become very, very wealthy.

There’s an oligarchy in Halifax of traders who make their livelihoods selling goods to British sailors and soldiers, right? So when sailors and soldiers don’t exist in Halifax, these people suffer. So they have kind of a totally different relationship with the British military than the people of Boston. And that’s really important to remember about these people who then arrive. Most of them have never been to Nova Scotia before, although they’re very familiar with it, at least in theory, dating all the [00:50:00] way back to the seven years war, the French and Indian War in North America. Stories of Nova Scotia had circulated in New England because it was New England troops who are eventually gonna reduce Lewisburg.

They’ll capture it twice and finally destroy it. So these troops who go to Nova Scotia, Cape Bre, and Lewisburg, they come back with stories about Nova Scotia, and none of them are pleasant. The stories they’re telling about Nova Scotia is that it’s barren, it’s rocky, it’s cold as hell. It’s covered in fog, right?

They’re not coming back being like, oh, there’s really good farmland. Although there is the Annapolis Valley. Annapolis Royal has really good farmland. That’s where the Acadians had lived prior to La Grande Ranch, ma. And so there is this region that is, is, is fertile, but most of it is kind of what they’re describing.

And in the New England imagination, Nova Scotia looms really, really large and not in a positive way. So the refugees arriving there are arriving, very cautiously. They’re, they’re nervous, they’re worried about what they’re going to find. And when they come to Halifax, it seems like, the worst of it was [00:51:00] accurate. This is a town that is significantly smaller in its population, right? Two and a half thousand to to Boston, which at the. 1770, as you noted, just below 16,000, right? So the population’s significantly smaller. It’s entirely dependent upon the military, right upon the Navy that is stationed there. The coastline is rocky. There isn’t in the surrounding region, kind of fertile farmlands that there is in the Annapolis Valley, which is on the opposite shore. And even worse, there’s not lodgings, right? We’re talking about more than a thousand people, close to 2000 of these civilian refugees from Boston alongside 9,000 British soldiers, right?

So think about what that does. A population of 2000 people, two and a half thousand, and then you have over 10,000 refugees arriving. With the British military. I mean, this is a significant influx of people that, for the merchants of Halifax, by the way a boom, right? I mean, this is exactly what they want. The governor of Nova Scotia is also totally [00:52:00] incompetent at this time. He has made an enemy he’s been in position for about a year by the time, or, or a couple of years, sorry, 1770 three. So a couple of years. By this time, he has named, he has made a enemy of all of the oligarchy, traitors in, in, in Halifax.

So there’s like a contest between the government and then the the wealthy oligarchy of Halifax over who has the real power. So they just arrived to a total mess. And we know this because if we read the newspapers, it’s like staggering how much they change prior to April of 1776. And then after there’s also a bit of a problem about. Patriot sympathies in Nova Scotia shortly after Lexington and Concord. In May of 1775, someone had set fire to bales of hay in Halifax that were supposed to be bound for Boston to feed the horses of, of the British [00:53:00] military. And this is really startling to the government in Nova Scotia because they’re worried about, patriot insurrection in Nova Scotia, right?

Why, why might not Nova Scotia rebel if Massachusetts is? So there’s also kind of a fear of these outsiders. They evacuate with the British military, but many Nova Scotians are skeptical of them. Like these are Bostonians and people from Massachusetts are they. Emblematic of the Patriots, like might they be more sympathetic to the Patriots than to the British?

Cause we know some people in Nova Scotia are, why might they not be Right? So there’s like fear of them. I mean, they arrive to a, just a total mess. And the government does the best they can to provide for these refugees. Like they’ll set price caps on things like meat and milk and cheese. And they’ll offer to imprison and fine merchants who are, who are breaking those laws, but it’s really hard to enforce them.

There’s a black market in goods that favors the wealthy to the detriment of the poor the poor living alongside soldiers and like [00:54:00] makeshift housing. I mean, the situation is really, really bad. Most of these refugees find a way to get themselves to London, like this group of of loyalist refugees. The thousand and a half, a lot of them are gonna remove to London. They don’t stay in Halifax long because the situation is just so dire, and it is a little bit of a trial run for the 30,000 loyalists who are gonna come in 1783 to Halifax and the greater Nova Scotia region. So if things were bad in 1776 with the arrival of these Boston evacuees, it’s gonna be even worse later on in 1783 when you have 30,000 coming to the Nova Scotia region.

So, it’s a bit of a trial run and, and sets the precedent that things are not gonna go well later on.

Nikki: You mentioned, obviously some folks will end up going back to, to Old England, if you will. Were, were there significant numbers of civilians who went to places like New York City or Charleston, places that maybe felt safe, [00:55:00] although. We know how things turned out, but maybe they felt safe at the time.

Patrick: New York will receive a number of these refugees, but not directly. The loyalists who end up in New York, a lot of them had gone to Nova Scotia, then to Old England, and then to New York. It’s interesting that, back to Old England remembering that most of these people had never been there, right?

They’re colonists who had actually never been. So it’s actually going to Old England for the first time, and they have in their imagination that they’re going to be welcomed as. Heroes, they’re, these staunch defenders of the empire have been unfairly persecuted, but that is not the case. In fact, there’s large indifference amongst the both government and regular people of places like London to their suffering.

Jonathan Sewell writes about this at length that he can’t get anyone to really listen to his cause, and he complains that he has no ability to secure any position even of dog whipper in anywhere in North America. And so, these people are, are really kind of destitute and they’re searching. I mean, there’s examples again, I mentioned the [00:56:00] newspaper Peter Rose, who. Who markets himself as a shoemaker from Boston, takes out an advertisement in the Nova Scotia Gazette, basically explaining that his business, he had hoped to remake it in Halifax, but he doesn’t have enough patrons, so he’s calling in his debts ’cause he’s gonna try his luck in London. That’s, you know what the advertisement suggests. There’s another one, Frederick Muncaster, also from Boston. He’s a saddler and his advertisement in the Nova Scotia Gazette I really like, ’cause I think it’s kind of funny. He plans to continue the business that he had operated on King Street in Boston, in Halifax, but makes this note, accountants made and repaired as well as the situation of this place will permit. So he’s a saddler from Boston who must have had a pretty good reputation. And then he notes I can do repairs and, and create saddles, but only as well as the availability of goods I have here in Halifax, which is suggesting that it’s far worse situation than he had experienced [00:57:00] in Boston. So these are people who are gonna make this kind of removal, right?

They have no choice but to leave Halifax. For, for places like Old England and then eventually New York. A lot of them actually end up removing again to Nova Scotia, right? Because when New York is evacuated in 17 se 1783, where do those people go? Most of them to South Shore Nova Scotia, not necessarily Halifax to what would be called Port Roseway or later on it’ll be developed into a variety of different settlements.

But to Nova Scotia, again.

Nikki: So if we think about. How these families trajectories play out. Those, those who decide to stay, those who decide to go, let’s say a generation or two later. How did the descendants fare in Halifax?

Patrick: There’s one really good quote that I think perfectly captures this. So this comes from the early 19th century. This is the descendant of a loyalist. So this is [00:58:00] a British colonist born in New Brunswick, which gets separated from Nova Scotian 1783 to be a loyalist colony, like it’s founded specifically to be a loyalist colony, whereas Nova Scotia had older roots that were pre loyalist. But there’s a loyalist, descendant in the early 19th century who writes that he wish, and I’m somewhat summarizing here, but it’s the, the language is nearly identical that he wishes his father had chosen the other side in the American war. So there are loyalists later on in British Canada and the Atlantic Maritimes in particular, who have these kind of thoughts about how life might have been different if their families had not chosen British sympathies.

If they, or if they had remained. In the colonies, but there are loyalists who go back. We shouldn’t read that quote to describe like all of the loyalists, because there are a number of loyalist refugees who returned to Massachusetts and the other colonies after the war is over again. The family [00:59:00] eye study is from Marblehead, but they all set up in Halifax in 1775.

Some of the earliest loyalist refugees arriving in early May, and they’ll return after 1783 a couple of times to kind of test the waters, especially for rebuilding the business that Thomas Roby had operated. Eventually after the eldest daughter marries an American, they’re able to bring the family out of exile.

Most of them, not all of them, but most of them back to Massachusetts where they actually seamlessly reintegrate with the population of now the independent state of Massachusetts, there’s, they don’t face many animosities. They’re not able to recover their property, right? That’s gone. But they are able to rebuild. A livelihood. It’s not as, as good of a livelihood as they had prior to the war. But upon Thomas Roby, the leader of the family upon his death in the early 19th century, a diarist in Salem where he’s living remarks that like, he was a good guy and he had these good principles, and yeah, he had been a loyalist, but he had kind of redeemed himself [01:00:00] like he was a loyalist, only because people thought he was a loyalist and he had redeemed himself by returning to the states and operating this business and importing the goods that they need. So there are families who come back. There’s definitely less than the families who remain in exile, but there are examples of families who return mostly through the marriage of daughters and can reintegrate rather seamlessly to Massachusetts and the broader American society.

Nikki: I think that maybe at the end of the day just comes back to the emotional toll that living through such a prolonged period of war brings that maybe people were just happy for it to be over to some extent. That it was maybe a little easier to, to unify and to just come together and move forward because everybody was maybe just so happy for it to be in the past.

Patrick: Circling back to the question that began this whole conversation about, the spectrum of [01:01:00] loyalties during the revolution, there’s also a spectrum of opinions after the war. About what it had achieved and, and what had happened during the war. For example, Jonathan Sewell, we’ll keep going back to him. He was good friends with John Adams prior to the war. Obviously not during it. He goes to exile first to London and then comes back to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick sets up in St. John. And he’ll write very clearly from St. John New Brunswick that I have no intention of seeing any of my old friends again in this world or the next, right?

That’s his line. And he is of course, referencing John Adams there. So there are some loyalists who are bitter, right? They will keep this bitter sentiment towards their old friends, towards the American Revolution, right through their deaths. But there are others who, like Thomas Roby are going to return with their families and reintegrate rather seamlessly to the American society. So I think what that shows us is that after the revolution, the spectrum of loyalties. It goes away, but the opinions about [01:02:00] what had occurred don’t. Some people remain bitter and others will be able to overcome that and reintegrate seamlessly to American society.

So there is like this legacy of the evacuation that exists long after the American Revolution. There isn’t necessarily a kind of loyalist memory in the United States like there is in Canada, but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that many loyalists come back to the United States and find it rather easy to reintegrate.

Nikki: Hmm. Well thank you so much Patrick. This has been fascinating and so timely. And, I’m not sure if this episode is coming out before or after March 17th. But you know, I really think about evacuation day as being Boston’s Independence Day, right?

It’s Boston’s 4th of July, but I think it’s really important to consider this other perspective that, for, for many people it was a day of great tragedy and loss, and so looking back from contemporary times, we really have to [01:03:00] hold both of those realities with us.

Patrick: if I were in Boston on March 17th, 2026, I would find my way to Dorchester Heights to kind of look out as best I could and imagine what it would’ve been like to both be there and watch the removal of the British troops, but to also be the people who were aboard those ships, looking back at their American homeland, knowing that this might be the last time they see it. And I think that remembering that emotional framework is key to understanding the revolution and the revolution at two 50.

Nikki: Thanks so much, Patrick.

Patrick: Thank you.

Jake: To learn more about the loyalist experience of the siege and evacuation of Boston, check out this week’s show notes at hubhistory.com. Slash 3 4 9. I’ll have links to more information about some of the primary sources that Patrick mentioned, like Nathaniel Green’s, quote about the great violence being done to the cause of humanity in occupied Boston, as well as links to Patrick’s talks for Old North about the loyalist [01:04:00] Exiles of Massachusetts and about the book Johnny Tremaine link to an upcoming old North Illuminated Talk by Laurie Rogers Stokes about the ongoing cultural influence of 17th century Puritans on 21st Century New Englanders. If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast@hubhistory.com. I still have profiles for Hub History on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and as at Hub History at Better Boston.

Over on Mastodon days, the only social media site where I’m regularly posting interacting with listeners, and if I’m being honest, complaining about contemporary politics, is Blue Sky. If you want to to connect with me on Blue Sky, just search for @hubhistory.com. a little bit of a break from social media, like a lot of people I know, it’s still easy to get in touch with us. [01:05:00] Just go to hub history.com and click on the Contact us link. While you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review.

If you do, drop me a line and I’ll send you a hub history sticker as a token of appreciation. That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners. That’s all