From the house they left, to the British lines, to New York, to the ship, to the shore where they landed. Press play to watch nine years: every dot is one person whose register entry names a place of origin. Tap a dot for one person’s journey and what the register says about it.
Jump to:
January 1775
0still at home
0within the British lines, or on the way
0at New York
0at sea, 1783
0landed
men women children · dashed lines: probable routes to the British lines · solid lines: the 1783 sailings from the register
Most of the people in the register did not step from an enslaver’s house onto a transport. The journey had stages, and often years between them. A Virginian who left in 1776 reached Lord Dunmore’s fleet in the Chesapeake, sailed to New York that August, and then lived seven years inside the British lines before boarding a ship for Nova Scotia. A South Carolinian who left at the siege of Charlestown in 1780 lived two and a half years within the lines there, came north with the evacuation fleet in December 1782, and sailed again from New York within months. A New Jersey family from Bergen County walked or rowed a few miles to the lines, and then waited.
Watch the dots gather. By the summer of 1776 the Virginians are at New York. In 1778 the Philadelphia people cross New Jersey. Through 1779 and 1780 the New Jersey and New York dots trickle in. In the second half of 1782 the southern towns empty into New York. Then, from April 1783, the harbour empties into the sea.
Reading the card. Each person’s card separates what the register records from what is drawn. “Recorded” is the register: the remark line as transcribed, and the ship and port. “Probable route” is the usual channel for that colony and year, from the history of the war, not from the entry, unless the card says the entry names it. The origins page has the data notes, and The sailings shows the 1783 ships alone.
What is recorded, and what is drawn. Two things on this map come from the register: the place each person left (and often the year), from the remarks column as transcribed by the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, and the ship, port and approximate date of sailing from New York, from the Nova Scotia Archives dataset. The register does not say how anyone travelled from home to New York. The middle of each journey, drawn with a dashed line, is the way people from that colony usually reached the British lines in that year, as the history of the war gives it: Lord Dunmore’s fleet carried Virginians from the Chesapeake to New York in August 1776; Collier and Mathew’s raid of May 1779 and the Yorktown campaign of 1781 brought others; people from South Carolina and Georgia came within the lines at Savannah (held from December 1778) and Charlestown (from May 1780) and came north when those towns were evacuated in July and December 1782; Philadelphia’s army marched across New Jersey to Sandy Hook in June 1778; Newport was evacuated by sea in October 1779; Boston in March 1776, to Halifax; people from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut walked, rode or rowed into the lines. For of the people shown, the entry itself names the way (“came from thence with Lord Dunmore,” “joined the army with General Arnold in 1781,” “left it upon the evacuation,” “taken by a privateer and brought into New York”), and the card says so. Dates within a year are spread at random; the year itself is the register’s. People whose entry gives no year are placed shortly before the usual channel. Ships at sea are shown on the usual passages. The 1,795 here are the people whose entry names a place in what became the United States and who could be matched to a register row; see Where they came from for the data notes.