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Ducit Amor Patriae

"Patriotism Leads Me"

Welcome to the Colonel Edward Jessup Branch

Formed in 1968

We hope you will enjoy your visit and find it interesting and informative.

Who Were the United Empire Loyalists?

    When America's original Thirteen Colonies went to war with Britain over objections to unpopular taxes, not everyone in the colonies favoured the move.

   Those who opposed the revolution were branded as traitors and became known as Loyalists since they remained loyal to the British Crown. Loyalists were harassed, denied the right to vote, sell land, sue debtors or to be lawyers, doctors or schoolmasters.  With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Britain recognized the independence of the United States.

   Approximately one-third of the estimated 250,000 colonists who had remained loyal to Britain fled to other British Possessions.  About 40,000 traveled north to what was then British North America (Canada) with the majority settling initially in the Maritimes.  An estimated 7,000 Loyalists settled in Upper Canada (Ontario).  In June 1784, many of these loyal families from military barracks near Montreal were provisioned, put aboard great rafts and sent up the St. Lawrence River to what became known as the Royal Townships, stretching along the north shore of the waterway from Lancaster on the east to Elizabethtown (Brockville).  Here they cleared land and established themselves on farms.

   Their presence had a profound and permanent impact on the nation that would become Canada.  Between four and six million Canadians, about one fifth of the population, can trace their ancestral roots back to one or more of those early Loyalist families.

   The Loyalist Heritage of less practical value than land and supplies, but of more lasting significance to Loyalists and their descendants, was the government's recognition of the stand that they had taken.  Realizing the importance of some type of consideration, on November 9, 1789, Lord Dorchester, the governor of Quebec, declared that it was his wish to put the mark of Honour upon the Families who had adhered to the Unity of the Empire.

   "Those Loyalists who have adhered to the Unity of the Empire, and joined the Royal Standard before the Treaty of Separation in the year 1783, and all their Children and their Descendants by either sex, are to be distinguished by the following capitals, affixed to their names: U.E. Alluding to their great principle The Unity of the Empire."

    This is the only hereditary title allowed in Canada.

      Sir Guy Carleton

Nov. 9, 1789

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