"Many Insults And Abuses From Rebels" - The Abuse of Loyalist Families During the Burgoyne Campaign

This Fall, McAlpin’s Corps of American Volunteers will be joining other progressive reenacting organizations at Saratoga National Historical Park to highlight the Loyalist refugee experience during the final weeks of General Burgoyne’s ill fated 1777 campaign.  The organization will be directing its efforts towards the portrayal of Loyalist civilians who were forced to flee their homes and seek the safety of the advancing British Army.

As a result of this living history presentation, the Nerds were curious about the hardships many Loyalist families faced at the hands of their political opponents and the exact circumstances that led to their respective flights towards British lines. 

Despite popular misconception, Loyalist women and their families generally did not gather their belongings and flee into the night in terror from local mobs. Instead, many Loyalist women concluded they and their families would be safer by withdrawing to British held territory north in Canada or south in New York City. As a result, these women appeared before local Committees of Safety and requested permission to leave their community to join their husbands who may have fled weeks or months earlier. 

At first, many committees were reluctant to release Loyalist families as they served a useful purpose as hostages. As historian Janice Potter-McKinnon noted “from the patriot perspective, the continued presence of loyalist families under their careful guard could deter future attacks, stem the flow of potential young male recruits into Canada and encourage the release of American prisoners held by British authorities.”  Ultimately, however, many local committees recognized that hostages would not stop Burgoyne's invasion and quickly agreed to release the women and their families.

Naturally, local officials carefully scrutinized the petitions of Loyalist women and set forth the terms of their departure. Often the decision to allow women to leave was prompted by concern about the financial cost involved in permitting them to stay. As the Albany County Commissioners for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies declared, “it having appeared to us that those Women are become chargeable to the Districts in which they severally reside and that they together with their Families are subsisted at public Expence.” Thus, patriot officials did not want communities to take on the burden of caring for indigent Loyalist families and were often quite willing to grant permission to such families to leave.

Not surprisingly, many Loyalist families were subjected to various forms of harassment prior to their departure - the most common and devastating being the confiscation, looting or destruction of their personal and real property. Likewise, many families faced violence at the hands of local mobs. 

Loyalist Sarah Mcginnis of New York, her daughter, and granddaughter all watched as local “Patriots” sold off at a public auction all their possessions, “except what would scantily support them in victuals and clothes.”. After this, the women were imprisoned in a local fort and so badly treated that Sarah's granddaughter later died. Sarah and her daughter "escaped at night with only what they could carry on their backs.” Sarah was forced to leave behind a son “who was out of his senses and bound in chains ... and who some time afterward was burnt alive.”

In the case of the Empy family, Philip, husband and father of eleven children, was subjected to “many insults and abuses from rebels.” When Philip and his three sons escaped from prison, the local officials turned their eyes to his wife and seven other children. Mrs Empty and her children were imprisoned and all of their real and personal property was confiscated. The family was eventually released however, when Philip’s wife returned to her home, she was “beat and abused [by] 4 men” and left on a road. Although she was rescued by friends and taken to Schenectady for medical treatment, she later died.

Elizabeth Cary Wilstee, a resident of the New Hamphshire Grants whose family had been victimized by the Green Mountain Boys in the 1760s, watched helplessly as a band of militiamen ransacked her home in 1776. In the middle of winter, the “outlaws” broke into her home and ordered her and her children to leave for her father's place. Although it was snowy and cold, she had no choice. “Looking back while on her way,” she saw the “outlaws moving her furniture and provisions from the house and loading them into a wagon . . . open her feather beds and shake the feathers from the ticks out of the windows and put the ticks and bed clothes into the wagon . . . pry the logs of the sides of the house out at the corners until the roof fell in.”

Shortly after his flight to Canada, Loyalist Daniel McAlpin’s property was seized and his wife and family were arrested. Mary McAlpin described her family’s treatment at the hands of the rebels in vivid language. “From the day her husband left to the day she was forced from her home the Captain's house was never without parties of the Rebels present. They lived at their discretion and sometimes in very large numbers. They destroyed what they could not consume. Shortly after the capture of the fleeing Loyalists a group of armed Rebels with blackened faces broke into the McAlpin's dwelling house. They threatened Mary and her children with violence and menace of instant death. They confined them to the kitchen while they stripped every valuable from the home. A few days after this, by an order of the Albany Committee, a detachment of Rebel Forces came and seized upon the remainder of McAlpin's estate both real and personal.” Mary McAlpin and her children were taken to an unheated hut located in Stillwater and locked inside “without fire, table, chairs or any other convenience.”

Hoping that the hardship would eventually break Mrs. McAlpin and her family, the rebels kept Mary and her children in captivity for several weeks. Mary McAlpin refused to comply. Enraged, rebels seized Mary and her oldest daughter and “carted” both of them through Albany. According to one period account, “Mrs. McAlpin was brought down to Albany in a very scandalous manner so much that the Americans themselves cried out about it.” A second period statement asserts “when Mrs. McAlpin was brought from the hut to Albany as a prisoner with her daughter . . . they neither of them had a rag of cloaths to shift themselves.”

Elizabeth Munro Fisher was a refugee who fled her home in 1777 for the safety of General Burgoyne’s army. In her memoirs written in the early 19th Century, Fisher describes how she was summarily evicted from her home by a local mob and forced to flee to the safety of nearby British lines.

“A party of riflemen surrounded our house, about six o'clock in the morning, and inquired for Mr. Fisher. I told them he was not at home; they asked me where he was gone — I told them; upon which they ordered me out of my house with a threat that if I did not immediately comply they would burn me in it. I took my child from the cradle and went out of the house. — I sat down at a little distance, and observed them taking out all my furniture, and then they burnt the house- In this situation, without a home and no one near me to whom I could apply for advice or assistance . . . I was at a loss what to do. — At last, seeing a man drive a cow, I asked him which way he was going. — He answered to the camp. — I asked him if he would let me go along with him. — Yes, said he, if you can keep up with me. I arose from the ground (for I was sitting down with my child on my lap) and followed him. I walked that day, in company with this man, twenty- two miles, and carried my child; by the middle of the day I had neither shoe nor stockings on my feet; my shoes, being made of silk, did not last long, and my stockings I took off and threw away, on account of the fatigue of carrying my child and walking so far.— I was willing to lay down and die. On the road this man would often say that he did not know but a party of Indians might be out a scouting, and if so, we should fall a sacrifice to them; at first I was alarmed, but my fatigue at length was so great that I told him I wished they might come and kill me and my child, for I was almost exhausted. I had nothing to eat or drink all that day, except the water he gave me out of the brooks with his hat. We saw several houses, but the people had fled from them. About sunset we came to a house where we found a woman and seven children. Her husband had gone — I stayed there that night; the next day the man went with his cow into the camp; this cow was ail he had, and he wanted to sell her for money. I sent by him to Mr. Fisher, letting him know where I was. Mr. Fisher came to me that evening, and the next day I went into the camp. After I had been a few days in the camp, I bought every thing my child and I needed. I related to Mr. Fisher what had been done at home — he was much surprised at Williams' conduct, as he had sent him, and the men that burnt the house were under his command—my furniture was sold at his house as tory property.”

As violence, imprisonment and looting continued to mount, many Loyalist women recognized their situation was becoming desperate. In a letter to her husband John, Mary Munro described just how dangerous her situation was. “For heavens sake, my dear Mr. Munro, send me some relief by the first safe hand. Is there no possibility of your sending for us? If there is no method fallen upon we shall perish, for you can have no idea of our sufferings here; Let me once more intreat you to try every method to save your family; my heart is so full it is ready to break; adieu my Dearest John, may God Almighty bless pre serve and protect you, that we may live to see each other is the constant prayer of your affectionate tho' afflicted wife ... P.S. The Childer's kind love to you.”