Loyalists find a new home in Canada, and eventually Peterborough

By Elwood Jones
Saturday, December 2, 2017


SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER Sketch by Gary Zaboly depicting James Rogers at Pointe des Cascades in 1784 which appeared in a book by obert J. Rogers, U.E., Rising above Circumstances: The Rogers Family in Colonial America (1998).

When the Loyalist emigres were forced to leave in 1783, that Maya Jasanoff recently described as the "Spirit of 1783", the Ontario locations for Loyalists were fairly close to the "front," along the St. Lawrence and west to Prince Edward County. Cornwall and Kingston laid claim to being Loyalist towns.

It is now clear that the importance of the wide diaspora of Loyalists that carried some 70,000 people to distant spots in the Caribbean, Britain, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and Quebec and Ontario was not restricted to one generation. The first emigration was in 1783, but those who came as part of a second migration in 1798, often dubbed Late Loyalist, proved to be committed to the "Spirit of 1783."

For many of those with direct links to what became Peterborough county, really third-generation Loyalists, the leadership was tied to the Late Loyalists and their base of operation was Cobourg. Zaccheus Burnham came from New Hampshire in 1798, and so did the Gilchrist brothers, including Dr. John Gilchrist, a founder of Keene whose later years were largely spent in Peterborough.

Burnham's links across the area were sealed when in 1818 he was named surveyor for the new District of Colborne. In that role, he had the honour of naming Peterborough, Ashburnham and Keene for New Hampshire places close to his boyhood haunts. His son, Mark Burnham, settled in Ashburnham in the 1850s, partly as Rector of Peterborough in charge of worship at St. John's Church. His great achievements were the founding of churches at Zion in Otonabee and in Warsaw, both named St. Mark's. Other Burnham brothers had come to Cobourg and their progeny included Elias Burnham, one of Peterborough's first two lawyers and whose estate was developed in the following generation as "The Avenues."

James Rogers (1728-1790), partly because he has connections to Peterborough, is a good case in point. Robert J. Rogers' Rising above Circumstances (1998) has done a thorough job of finding records relating to his ancestor (and the brothers of his ancestor) and that is very helpful. He also visited Trent Valley Archives a few weeks ago. Few Loyalists have been so well understood.

James was a veteran of the French and Indian Wars, and received a large acreage in what became Vermont but was then contested between New York and New Hampshire. After the first shots of the Revolution were fired at Lexington in April 1775, the New York Provincial Congress offered James Rogers a commission as a Brigadier; James refused because he hoped there was a way short of civil war to resolve valid grievances. James was one of the delegates, July to September 1776, at a convention in Dorset to plan statehood for Vermont. James supported a separate state but would not sign oaths to accept the authority of Committees of Safety or their Oath of Allegiance. Vermont was created by 1777.

Because of these stands James (but not his family) was forced to leave by April 1777. His lands seem to have been treated as confiscated but the Town of Kent was instructed, but not until 1779, to provide enough land to sustain Mrs. Margaret Rogers. Because Vermont was not officially recognized as a state by New York and New Hampshire, and the flux of the revolutionary years, decision-making was not always clear.

James Rogers was hampered by lack of clarity in the British Army, partly due to the slowness of their commanders to recognize the seriousness of the situation. James fled to Montreal in April 1777, just as General Burgoyne was launching his attack on the rebels with a plan to meet with General Howe's forces. Burgoyne was defeated at Saratoga and the myth of invincibility was shattered. It was not so easy to supply the British army in what proved, to Burgoyne's surprise, to be hostile territory.

In May 1779, General Sir Henry Clinton gazetted James' brother Robert to form a Loyalist regiment, the King's Rangers, and James became Major Commandant of the 2nd Battalion. When James arrived at Quebec City in July, General Haldimand said there were no provisions for his troops. The King's Rangers were stationed at the "key to Canada", Fort St. John on the Richelieu River. Finally, in August 1781, the British granted full pay to the Loyalist troops. Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, 19 October 1781.

By the spring of 1783, it was clear that the Loyalist troops would not be able to return to their homes.

The hopes of James and Robert Rogers were not realized because the British military leadership, and especially General Howe, were more interested in nurturing the Patriots; they seemed to want to be diplomats when what was needed was military leadership.

James Rogers and his wife Mary had five children. The direct link to Peterborough is through their younger son, David McGregor Rogers (1772-1824), who was an MPP in the Upper Canada Assembly, 1796-1816, 1820-1824. He was clearly a major figure in Newcastle District, holding several local offices, and significant tracts of land. Rogers married in 1802 Sarah Playter, and in 1811 her widowed sister, Elizabeth Perry; he had two sons and two daughters by his first wife. In politics, Rogers supported the House of Assembly and its rights, which by 1812 aligned him with the emerging opposition, which I identified with Joseph Willcocks (1773-1814). In 1812, half the members of the small House of Assembly were voting together on most issues in a period when the Executive controlled the political agenda. As Rogers' biographer, Robert L. Fraser, observed, "Rogers represented a brand of loyalism that emphasized the king's prerogatives and the subject's rights brought together in constitutional equilibrium." Ideas flowed easily between Britain, United States and Canada, and Rogers' ideas were influenced by the trans-Atlantic whiggism. Thomas Jefferson captured part of this whiggism when he observed that government is best which is closest to the people.

In my biographical essay on Joseph Willcocks, I concluded, "To find a consistent and rational thread in Willcocks's political career it is not necessary to discount his words and emphasize his treason; rather, it may be found by paying closer attention to what he said, when he said it, what he did, and when he did it. Firmly in the opposition whig tradition, Willcocks opposed arbitrary and distant power, valued loyalty to his country rather than to his rulers, and believed in the independence of colonial legislatures. At great inconvenience to his own position, he pursued a public course consistent with those whig principles." David McGregor Rogers was never a traitor, but he shared these Whig ideas.

David McGregor Rogers' father-in-law was also very distinguished. George Henry Playter (1736-1822) served in the Royal Navy, 1755-1757 and then came to Philadelphia, soon settling in West New Jersey at the Draw Bridge that crossed the Crosswick River. In 1766, he married Elizabeth Welding, a Quaker, and soon became a Quaker also.

In 1776, after Washington's defeat in New York City, the Patriot forces retreated and destroyed the Playter bridge in order to slow down the British pursuit. The British General Sir William Howe asked Playter, who was a shipwright and cabinet maker, to repair the bridge, and he did. This made him a Loyalist, and he shed his Quaker religion in order to fight with the British at the battles of Trenton and Princeton. Playter became an officer for Guides & Pioneers, and operated successfully as a spy. In 1780, he took his family to Nova Scotia for safety reasons, and then rejoined the British army in New York.

In 1793, Playter had become one of the largest land-owners in what became Toronto; the Don River flowed through his main holding, and he built a bridge, the first over the Don, so it would be easier to visit his sons who were on the east side of the Don. He also owned land between Queen and Bloor in what is now downtown Toronto.

The son of David McGregor Rogers, a third generation-Loyalist was a founder of Ashburnham with a remarkable family.

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