LOWER-DELMARVA-ROOTS-L Archives

From: John Weiss <>
Subject: War of 1812
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 22:17:26 -0700

>From John Weiss

I am writing to ask for help in a historical study.

My request is not stricly genealogical as far as current members
of DelMarVa are concerned, since the few thousand subjects of my
research left the US between May 1813 and April 1815 and never
came back.

Nevertheless the War of 1812 hit many coastal farmers around the
Chesapeake badly through the departure of their slaves, and many
families must have suffered a considerable change in their
fortunes in the process. Would I be wrong in thinking that here
and there among the family histories being researched there must
be stories of the depredations of the British when they invaded
the Chesapeake in 1813 and 1814, and in particular among family
records that survive there might be mention of the slaves who
took their freedom?

I have spent the last five years trying to track down the
refugees from the time they came on board British ships to their
ultimate destinations, and to match them to the American
accounts of those who left.

My main work has concentrated on those who were formed into the
Corps of Colonial Marines, who finished up in Trinidad as
independent farmers. They founded a community that still today
maintains a strong identity as the 'Merikens', even though
scattered around the world, and ironically with many returned to
the US, frequently as professionals such as academics, doctors,
lawyers and so on.

A large number were taken to Nova Scotia, where their descendants
can be traced with more difficulty than in Trinidad, and the
smallest handful found their way to the UK. A few, and I have
found and named 18 so far, were homesick for their old lives and
made their own way home, some from Bermuda where many were
working on the building of the new Royal Naval Dockyard, some
from Nova Scotia and possibly one ro two from Scotland.

If anyone reading this posting believes they have information
that applies specifically to the period of the War of 1812 I
should be very pleased to hear from them, directly if they like
or else through the list, and if in the process I can in return
offer useful information on DelMarVa families of that time I
should be happy to do so.

Some of you may have seen posted to the GHOTES list a couple of
weeks ago my message about the May 1814 attack on Pungoteague. As
a result of positive response to that posting, I am hopeful that
this wider request may be even more fruitful.

John Weiss
whose adoptive ancestors left the US in 1815 for a better life;
and whose own ancestors left Poland in 1905 for a better life.

This thread:

• War of 1812 by John Weiss <>