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 Loyalists and the Bahamas |
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With the exception of the pirates and religious dissidents who were attracted to it's labyrinth of hiding places, the Bahamas
had lain largely uninhabited for 270 years after the indigenous Lucayans had all died, either from the diseases the
Spanish brought, or by being enslaved by them and worked to death in their gold and silver mines on Hispaniola . So when Britain had little choice but to exchange Florida for the Bahamas at the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, approx eight thousand displaced American Loyalists with few other options were given land grants for them to settle throughout the islands. They came from both New York, who settled mainly in the Abaco Islands/Harbour Island area and from Florida (many of whom originated from the Carolinas & Georgia) who settled in most of the other islands. Another sixteen hundred would follow them later after they had tasted anarchy in the new USA. However these days there are only about a half dozen or so towns where this is still obvious. The most notable are Marsh Harbour 
on Great Abaco Island with Bahamas's highest proportion of whites (50%), New Plymouth on
Green Turtle Cay,
Man-o-war Cay and
Hope town on Elbow Cay all just east of
Great Abaco Island. Dunmore Town
on Harbour Island and Spanish Wells are both just off the north of
Eleuthera Island and George Town is on
Great Exuma Island.These towns were founded under difficult circumstances by Americans that had suffered grievously for resisting the insurgents forced break with the Motherland and then had to endure the island's primitive conditions in vast tented refugee camps at Carleton while the process of deciding who got what took place. The clapboard sided homes they built still stand resembling the saltbox cottages of New England, with their pastel coloured sides and surrounding white picket fences, where life remains charmingly old fashioned, gentle, detached from the outside world and somewhat frozen in time. 
One of the first to be established was on Harbour Island when the Loyalist Governor of Virginia having fled America was
asked to set out a settlement for American refugees and founded Dunmore Town, which then became the capital of the Bahamas
but subsequently lost out to Nassau and then went into decline with the depression caused by the First World War.Nearly all the white 'plantation' Loyalists that arrived were accompanied by Creole workers and freed Blacks who had also chosen to be loyal rather than stay in America and risk being taken over by rebel slave owners. 
But the cotton plantations they recreated were soon to fail due to the poor soil, it's erosion and insect infestations. So
not being commercially viable, many estate owners moved elsewhere and left their land to be divided up
between those workers that had followed them, as subsistence farming was going to be their only foreseeable future.
But in doing so, to become the rightful owner of these lands they took the surname of the donating owner, meaning that
the law would simply bequeath it to them and as a result, the larger the estate the larger the number of
descendants with the same surname, an example of this is; its jokingly alleged that nearly everyone on Exuma is a Rolle
after Lord John Rolle who had owned hundreds of acres there.The urban Loyalists who had settled in New Providence transformed the Bahamas, but their ethics and enterprise had placed them at odds with Nassau's old established order who were mainly descended from pirates and wreckers that claim to have formed the first democracy i.e. 'one man one vote' but without secrecy this probably only achieved the biggest thug getting elected. 
Evidence of this difference is still apparent in Nassau (with nearly 70% of the Bahamas population) as despite all
that the Loyalists did in turning a
shambolic backwater into a major efficient port, being responsible for most of the architecture, it's institutions and
building a good economy, it's down played with many there preferring to believe the US slant on events.
These people seem to imagine that only self interest and not the rejection of bigotry being foisted on them by a minority,
could explain why someone should want to remain loyal.This despite Britain having abolished slavery decades before the USA and having the Royal Navy active in intercepting ships transporting slaves to the new world and setting them free on New Providence Island, they prefer to dwell on the abomination of slavery, instead of the honourable heritage of loyalty. |
 I'm sure the Abacos parrots would like such sceptics to consider, that if America's revolution had extended to the Bahamas, descendants of the original settlers wouldn't still own most of the land (e.g. Hawaii) or enjoy some of the cleanest waters in the world, they instead would probably have some of the most polluted, not exactly the perfect setting for a James Bond movie. 
Dynamic Drive
Loyalist Monuments |
