The United Empire Loyalists

It is a little known fact that slavery existed in the early years of our Island’s History. Seventeen years after Samuel Holland divided the Island into sixty-seven lots in 1767, the first wave of American Loyalists landed on the Island in 1784, a year after peace had been established in the newly created United States. These troops headed north with their families to begin their new lives under the British Flag, most of whom initially settled in Nova Scotia.

This huge influx of settlers have become known in Canada as the United Empire Loyalists. The year of their arrival coincided with the establishment of New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784. Many of PEI’s Loyalist settlers initially arrived in Shelburne, Nova Scotia where they reported having seen advertisements for land on St. John’s Island, as PEI was called at that time. An article on the front page of the Colonial Herald newspaper in May of 1841, contains a list of claimants appearing in the Journals of the Council as “Loyalists and Disbanded Soldiers.” Approximately four hundred and five names appear on this list.

Researching records on PEI circa 1784 can be a hit and miss process. The more important the individual, the better his or her life was documented. The Shepard and Byers families were two of the earliest Black families on the Island. David and Kesiah (Wilson) Shepard were slaves belonging to PEI’s second Lieutenant Governor Edmund Fanning. John and Amelia Byers belonged to Colonel Joseph Robinson, a friend of Edmund Fanning. Because of the stature of their owners, these families in particular are well documented. There are many slaves, however, who were not as well documented. Many did not even have a surname.

The majority of Prince Edward Island’s Black community today are descendants of these slaves brought with the United Empire Loyalists. A fact little known to the descendants of these Island’s early Black settlers, is that their ancestors were some of the Island’s earliest settlers after the deportation of the Island’s Acadian settlers in 1758. Some members of my employers, the Black Islander’s Co-operative, are six and seventh generation Islanders.