The register, where they were from
Where they came from
Beside most names the clerks wrote a line: who had claimed the person, in what town, and when they had left. From those lines, 1,795 people can be placed on a map of the former colonies, 189 of them in New Jersey. Scroll to follow them home.
One dot, one person, one place
Of the 2,477 entries transcribed so far, 1,846 name a place, and 1,795 of those places lie in what became the United States: Virginia 701, South Carolina 417, New Jersey 189, New York 155, Georgia 84, Pennsylvania 65, Maryland 43, Rhode Island 38, Connecticut 36, North Carolina 32, Massachusetts 27. Each dot sits on the town or county the clerk wrote; where only the colony is named, the dots gather in a loose cluster inside it.
Virginia: the Norfolk shore
701 people, more than a third of all who named a place. Norfolk alone accounts for 147, Norfolk County 53 more, Nansemond 85, Princess Anne 29, Portsmouth 28, Hampton 23, and the Eastern Shore counties 53. This is the coast where Lord Dunmore, the royal governor, proclaimed freedom in November 1775 to enslaved people of rebels who would join him, and where his fleet lay until the summer of 1776. British forces came back to the Chesapeake in 1779, 1780 and 1781, and people came within their lines each time.
South Carolina and Georgia
South Carolina 417, of whom 248 named Charlestown; Georgia 84, 59 from Savannah; North Carolina 32, mostly Wilmington and the Cape Fear. The British took Savannah in December 1778 and Charlestown in May 1780. When they gave the two towns up in 1782, people who had come within their lines came north with the garrisons, wintered in New York, and sailed again in 1783.
New York and the North
New York 155, Long Island 33 of them: fewer than its size would suggest, because people already inside the British lines at New York had no need to travel. Pennsylvania 65, 42 of them from Philadelphia, which the British held from September 1777 to June 1778. Rhode Island 38, where Newport was a British post from 1776 to 1779. Connecticut 36, from the coast towns of Fairfield, Stamford and Horseneck, across the Sound from the British on Long Island. Maryland 43, Massachusetts 27, Delaware 4.
New Jersey: 189 people
The map tightens on New Jersey. Bergen County is thickest: Hackensack 23, Tappan 17, Bergen 11, Acquackanonk 9, Paramus 7, Barbadoes Neck 7, with Closter, Harrington, English Neighbourhood and Secaucus beside them. Then Newark 10 and the Newark Mountains, Elizabethtown 4, New Brunswick 10, Perth Amboy 3 and Woodbridge; Monmouth County 9 with Middletown 5 and Shrewsbury 4; and a scatter from Morristown to Burlington to Salem. The British lines at New York lay a few miles from the Bergen towns for the whole war.
Around Franklin Township
Dots outlined in black are people with a page on this site: Piscataway for the Field family, Millstone for Peter Pharo, Princeton for John Longstreet, New Brunswick, Bound Brook, Quibbletown, Rocky Hill and Raritan for others. Twenty-eight of the twenty-nine appear here; Phillis Farmer’s entry is in the last book of the register, not yet transcribed. Hover or tap a dot for the name, the person who claimed them, the ship and the register page; the full list is below the map.
Who they were, and when they left
106 men, 58 women and 23 children. 156 are written as formerly enslaved, 18 as born free, 4 as free by other means. 67 carried a certificate of freedom, 48 of them signed by General Birch. The year most often given is 1776, when the British army held much of the state through the winter: 41 of the 149 dated New Jersey entries, against 31 for 1779. Where they went: Port Roseway 78, Port Mouton 26, the Saint John River 24, Annapolis Royal 17, Annapolis or Saint John 25, Quebec 3, Abaco 3, England or Germany 2.
When they left
For 1,348 of the people with a named place, the register gives a year, or a phrase that yields one: “left him four years ago,” counted back from 1783. The two tallest bars are 1778 and 1779. Sir Henry Clinton’s Philipsburg Proclamation of June 30, 1779 promised security within the British lines to any enslaved person who deserted a rebel owner, and some entries say the person left “in consequence of proclamation” or “on the strength of” one. The 1776 bar is Dunmore’s Virginians and the New Jersey winter. The small bars for 1781 and 1782 are the end of the war; after Yorktown there were few lines left to reach. New Jersey, in red, follows its own rhythm, with its peak in 1776.
Counts are of entries with a year; about a third of entries with a place give no year. “Before 1775” holds the few who gave an earlier year: some born free or freed, some who said they had left an enslaver years before the war.
The New Jersey people
Every entry the register records as from New Jersey, in register order: 189 people on more than forty vessels. The place is as the clerk wrote it, with today’s name where it differs. The year is the register’s own. The name of the person who claimed them, and the line as transcribed, are given for each; the Loyalist in whose possession they sailed is noted where the register gives one. Each matched entry links to the page image at the Nova Scotia Archives.
| Name | Age | Marked | Place recorded | Left | Status in the register | Claimed by, and the line as transcribed | Vessel and port | Register |
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