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Birchtown
Black Loyalists

1783

Photographs of
Memorial

Birchtown
Shelburne County
Nova Scotia

GPS location:   43°44'42"N   65°22'47"W
Google map

Most Black Loyalists in New York at the end of the American Revolution were evacuated to Nova Scotia with the bulk of other Loyalists. There were roughly 4000 black refugees brought to Nova Scotia in 1785. The community of Birchtown had about 1,500 people and at the time was the largest community of free blacks outside Africa...
Source:
    http://www.americanrevolution.org/blackloyalists.html

When the end (of the American Revolution, 1776-1783) came, the top British commanders kept their word to the King's Black soldiers. In November 1782, Britain and America signed a provisional treaty granting the former colonies their independence. As the British prepared for their final evacuation, the Americans demanded the return of American property, including runaway slaves, under the terms of the peace treaty. Sir Guy Carleton, the acting commander of British forces, refused to abandon black Loyalists to their fate as slaves. With thousands of apprehensive blacks seeking to document their service to the Crown, Brigadier General Samuel Birch, British commandant of the city of New York, created a list of claimants known as The Book of Negroes...
Source: A Monument to George Washington's Slaves
    http://www.blackcommentator.com/washingtons_slaves.html

Photographed on 19 August 2003

Photographed on 19 August 2003

Photographed on 19 August 2003

Photographed on 19 August 2003

Photographed on 19 August 2003

Plaque upper half (above), lower half (below)

Photographed on 19 November 2002

Photographed on 19 November 2002

Photographed on 19 November 2002

Photographed on 19 November 2002

Photographed on 19 November 2002

Map showing the location of the Black Loyalists memorial
Birchtown, Shelburne County, Nova Scotia

Photographed on 19 August 2003

— The Shelburne Coast Guard, 29 October 2002

Birchtown, Shelburne County
Heritage Community

Much of the world is still unaware of the drama that unfolded so many years ago in the small village of Birchtown in Shelburne County, Nova Scotia. Today, people in that and neighbouring communities are working to make that story more widely known.

The general story of the United Empire Loyalists is well known: in the wake of the American Revolution in the 1780s, thousands of people from the former Thirteen Colonies chose to flee to Canada to start life again under the British flag. In the mid-1780s, about 10,000 of these people came to the Shelburne area. Of these, about 1,500 were former slaves, largely from Georgia and the Carolinas, attracted to the British side by the promise of freedom and land.

These Black Loyalists settled at Birchtown, just a few kilometres west of Shelburne. Life in those first few years was hard enough for White Loyalists, but for Black Loyalists, the situation was even worse. Many arrived in autumn, and spent the winter in tents or makeshift huts. They had been promised land, but most received none...

[Coastal Communities Newsletter, Vol.6 #4, March-April 2001]
    http://coastalcommunities.ns.ca/v6_i4.html#cp

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