The register, sorted · Board 1
Where they landed
Three thousand and nine dots, one for each person the British clerks wrote down at New York in 1783, falling into the places they went and sorting by what the register says about them.
men women children · tap a dot for the person
Three thousand and nine people
Every dot is one entry in the British register of 1783: a name, an age, a line of description, a ship. Between April 23 and November 30 the clerks at New York wrote down 3,009 Black people as they boarded. Scroll, and watch the dots sort themselves by what the clerks recorded.
Burgundy: men. Gold: women. Blue: children. Tap any dot for the person.
Where they landed
More than a third, 1,089 people, went to Port Roseway, the new Loyalist town that became Shelburne, with the Black settlement of Birchtown beside it. Port Mouton took 559 and the Saint John River 481; Annapolis Royal 309, and 253 more sailed on the Clinton for Annapolis and Saint John together. Smaller numbers went to Halifax, Cumberland and Quebec (98), to the Bahamas (123), and to Europe (88). For nine the clerks gave no destination.
Men, women, children
1,340 men, 919 women and 750 children: more than half the register is women and children, which is the fact Board 1 turns on. Families went together; the register often lists a mother and her children on consecutive lines.
Their ages
The largest group, 1,057 people, was in its twenties; 442 were under ten, and 173 were fifty or older. The ages are the clerks’ guesses or the person’s own word, and are often rounded.
Where they came from
For 1,763 people the entry names a place. Virginia leads with 678, then South Carolina with 387, New Jersey, New York, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Maryland; New England supplied 96, and a few came from the West Indies, North Carolina and elsewhere. For 1,246 the transcription gives no place, or the entry is in Book Three, which has not been transcribed.
What the clerks wrote about freedom
For 1,527 people the entry says they had left an enslaver, naming him and often the year. 246 were recorded as born free and 118 as free. 205 were travelling “in possession of” a Loyalist: still enslaved, carried away as their owner’s. Seven were indentured. For 235 the line is unclear, and 671 entries are in Book Three, not yet transcribed. The clerks’ categories are kept here as they wrote them.
The twenty-nine, back in their places
The large outlined dots are the twenty-nine named people and the infant from the towns around Franklin Township, in the ports where they landed: fourteen and the infant at Port Roseway, seven at Port Mouton, six on the Saint John River, two at Annapolis Royal.