The loyalists come home to Fairfield: how Fairfield University students discovered a dark page in their local and national history.

The Loyalist Project would never have been born at Fairfield University if my wife and I had not spotted the sign for Kings Landing on our way back through New Brunswick to New England last summer.

We are veterans of at least a score of restorations, from one of the first, Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, to one of the most rustic, Jamestown in Virginia, to one of the more recent, Vermillionville in Louisiana, and to certainly the most regal, Colonial Williamsburg.

Our jaunt to New Brunswick had, of course, included a stop at the Acadian Village outside of Caraquet on our trip up the Acadian Coast, through Shippigan, and up to Miscou Island. We then zipped back down the Miramichi to keep to our usual one week or less rule about summer driving vacations since we acquired two pit bulls and three cats--all of whom we expensively accommodated at the Best Friends kennel.

"Looks like another Sturbridge Village," my wife Inez said as we looked at the Kings Landing map near "Admissions": a mill, some farmhouses, a schoolhouse and a log cabin. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

"But it's a beautiful spot," I said, and pointed out the winding Saint John River to her, worried she would caution that our late afternoon might better be spent hooking onto the 195 highway where it began (or ended) just over the Maine border.

"OK, you've got an hour," my wife said. "Better take the oxcart instead of walking."

A few minutes later we were standing in front of the Daniel Morehouse home that had been rescued from a dam project further down the Saint John and brought to be dutifully restored at Kings Landing.

"That's a Connecticut Saltbox," I noted with surprise. "What's it doing in New Brunswick?"

It was soon after, when I began speaking to the "Morehouse" guide posted in front of the New England walk-in fireplace, that I realized the significance of what we were looking at.

"The Morehouses were from Connecticut," the docent said.

"So are we," my wife and I replied in unison.

"Near Fairfield."

"So are we," my wife said.

"I teach at the University there," I offered.

"Redding Ridge, actually," the guide said more precisely.

"That's just up the road from our house," I said. "We buy our apples there."

"He built this house to be a duplicate of the one he grew up in."

"As soon as we get home, we're going to look for it," we both said to the "Morehouse" person.

The docent looked at us blankly at first, then, seeing our interest in the property, let us look at Curator Daniel Butler's fine summary of Morehouse history both in Connecticut and Canada.

Daniel Morehouse UE was a Loyalist who had left King's College (now Columbia University) after only six months attendance, came to the aid of his Loyalist-leaning Connecticut family and joined a Loyalist regiment to fight for the King with his three brothers--against other Morehouses from Fairfield County who fought for the "other" George.

At three in the morning, the Fairfield contingent of the local militia had surrounded the home in Redding Ridge that Daniel grew up in (Daniel was in New York, at college). The story, as recorded by one of the raiders, would be suitable for reading today for terrorist camp training:

"Thursday Morning--Our people made them rise about three o'clock in the morning, when there was the greatest confusion imaginable. Some were taking an everlasting leave of their families, whilst others were crying ready to kill themselves, for they all expected to be hung immediately on coming down.

"Ten o'clock, one hundred and fifty men, on horseback, have this moment entered the Town in triumph, attended with musick, and brought in eight criminals, together with their arms, also, the arms of a number of petty ones, whose persons they thought unworthy of notice. Half after ten another entry of fifty men equipped as the others and brought in five more of the wretches, all of whom are carried up town where I shall repair as speedily as possible to gain more intelligence.

"Eight at night and just returned," all I can learn is that they are to take their trial before the Committee who are now sitting for that purpose; and it is expected they will not break up before morning, when I shall march up to hear the conclusion. It is said some have been found guilty to-night, but I can't vouch for it."

Daniel "escaped" to New York, where he joined the Queen's Rangers (who could blame him?) and, with other Loyalists, fought against those who would never again be his countrymen. At the war's end, his regiment was brought to Long Island, where he met and married Jane Gill, a daughter of a local Loyalist there. They were exiled together to Canada by an Act of the United States Congress that stated:

"You are hereby notified to depart ... as you are considered an enemy of your country. Therefore, take your all and your family and follow your friends to that country that your King, your master, has provided for those of your character."

Daniel settled near Saint John, New Brunswick, where he built an exact duplicate of the 1727 house he was raised in on Redding Ridge (see photos on page 22). He eventually ran a sawmill and gristmill, had many children, served as a Warden in the local Anglican Church, and became a Supervisor of Roads, a Trustee of the school system, a Justice of the Peace, and a local Magistrate. He died in 1829, aged 77. His obituary read:

"Major Morehouse was one of that band of Loyalists who in the memorable year of 1783, relinquished the hopes and expectations of youth, and came to this province--where in the various relations of life, for the long period of half a century, he commanded universal respect and esteem."

Our one-hour visit to Kings Landing had stretched, predictably, so long that we were the last visitors that day to leave the restoration.

"I'm going to work this" into my Early American Literature Course this fall," I said to Inez as we drove across the border.

One of the first things we did on our return to Connecticut was to drive the ten miles north to the original Morehouse homestead still standing on Poverty Hollow Road. (located on copies of the maps kindly sent to me by Kings Landing). At number 279 we easily found the original Samuel Morehouse homestead--the same one that Daniel's father Joseph inherited, and the one which Daniel and James and their two other brothers were raised in. Though the house had been expanded over the years into an impressive mansion (complete with riding rinks, duck ponds, and scenic wooden bridges by one of its former owners, Edward D. Jones, who founded the Dow Jones Averages), the centrepiece of the estate was the exact duplicate of the Daniel Morehouse home, which is still displayed at Kings Landing. (See a photo of the home on page 20.)

I then checked in the classic anthology I had used for my "Early American Literature" course for more than a decade, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, the absolute Bible for university American Literature majors throughout the United States, the same, more or less, that I had studied from in college forty years ago.

There was nothing.

The Norton had changed over the years to incorporate more "diversity." The exclusive "Dead White Men's" club hard-core literature that I had once studied had been supplemented with First People's chants for rain, with originally oral accounts of African American slaves and with pioneer women's diaries--very poorly written, by the way.

Of course, there were The Federalist Papers, the famous debates in writing between Hamilton and Adams, but these dealt with how to fashion a government after Independence was declared and, compared to the brutal civil war between at least thirty percent of our colonists loyal to the Crown and the thirty percent bent on independence, they seemed mere post-independence hair-splitting.

In no place between the holy covers of The Norton did Peter Oliver (Chief Justice of the Massachusetts' Supreme Court) rage as he did in his posthumously-published A Progress of the American Revolution. Nowhere was Samuel Seabury's call for caution in the New York Gazette, "Letters From A Westchester Farmer." There was not even a sliver of Thomas Hutchinson's (the last Royal Governor of Massachusetts) excellent three-volume work, the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay. If you go by the most popular anthology of American Literature ever published, the American Revolution was uncontested --what would be called in a later age, a "slam dunker."

With September on the way, I was composing the syllabus for my Fairfield University course that always included a tour of Old Fairfield (founded in 1639) and required oral reports on local First People tribes, noted colonial events such as the second largest witch trial in the American colonies, the burning of the town by the British, and pointing out the homes of prominent families around the Town Green (which included the home of the Burr family, cousins of Aaron). With Daniel Morehouse in mind, I decided I would introduce required oral reports on the Fairfield Loyalists.

I had a laundry list of topics I was interested in, subjects that, though they were not covered in detail in The Norton, would inform our discussions of the Revolutionary War, which included:

** The Morehouse Family

** First Peoples In Fairfield

** Post "Discovery" History of Connecticut

** History of Fairfield To Revolution *

** History of Fairfield During Revolution *

** Free Blacks and Slaves In Fairfield *

** History of Fairfield Revolution to Civil War *

** Morehouse Family in Fairfield * Genealogy

** Morehouse Family--Interview

** Daniel Morehouse and family in Fairfield (Redding) *

** Daniel Morehouse, Loyalist and other Fairfield Loyalists *

** Morehouse Family in Fairfield--With Revolution or Neutral? *

** Daniel Morehouse in New Brunswick

** Kings Landing, NB and Morehouse House

** New England Loyalists During Revolution

** New England Loyalists To New Brunswick and Nova Scotia

** Diaries and Other First Person Accounts of Morehouse (or other)--Rev. Period

** Non-English European Immigrants to Fairfield (Pre Civil War)

** Fairfield Historical Society Sites (One Personal Site Visit)

** Samp Mortar First People's Site--Personal Expeditions

** Great Swamp Fight--1637--The Massacre of the Pequots by the English Militia

** History and Economy of Southport

** Fairfield/Black Rock Witch Trial

** The Pequot War

** The Fairfield Historical Society- Plans for the Future

** Archaeology in Fairfield *

* Please remember that we are talking about Old Fairfield--that means parts of Westport, Easton, Redding, and Bridgeport.

Students wanted to volunteer first for the more "sexy" topics especially the witch trials but, with twenty--five in the class, I was able to cajole some of the those who appeared most interested in local history, to assume the Loyalist topics.

My Early American Literature course is offered through University College, the "returning student" division that usually enrols students, ages 30 to 50. This made it easy to find students who not only had an appreciation for local history, but who lived as taxpayers in our local communities.

I was also lucky. My most helpful and able student, Mrs. Andrea Rink, turned out to be a school nurse in Redding, who lived on Redding Ridge, just up the hill from Daniel and many other Morehouse family Colonials. Though she already had an RN degree, it was her dream to return to college and receive a Bachelor's degree. She was the first to volunteer.

I showed her a map of the original Morehouse settlements on Poverty Hollow Road, the one I had received through the kindness of Kings Landing, and she not only knew of the properties, but knew some of the current owners, in addition to officers of the Redding Historical Society.

Andrea volunteered to do a report on the Redding Morehouses, while another student volunteered to look up current Fairfield Morehouses from the same colonial family from which the Redding clan descended. Andrea supposed there were still Morehouses living in Redding too and volunteered to locate one for an interview. By our second class she had discovered that a Mr. Andrew Morehouse worked as the computer specialist at her own Middle School. She said that she would approach him about what he knew about his family and see if he was aware that many of them had fled to Canada after the Revolution.

To the surprise of both of us, Andrew told her that he had no relations in Connecticut. His family was from Nova Scotia and his father had immigrated to Danbury, Connecticut. Andrew had grown up in Danbury, was married, and has three young children.

He recalled that his uncle, Mr. Russell St. Hillaire, had written a family genealogy some years before and sent for a copy. When he read it, he was stunned to realize that his Morehouse ancestor, James, was the brother of Daniel. James did not disembark with Daniel at Saint John, but had stayed on board with two other brothers and went on to settle in Annapolis, Nova Scotia.

By this time, the Fairfield Historical Society was getting its annual visits from my Early American Literature students who were looking for information for their oral reports. The FHS said they had only a bit of information about the Loyalists, that Fairfield itself had only been six percent Loyalist, and that the "hotbed" of Loyalist sentiment had been in Redding, specifically up on Redding Ridge, the original home of Daniel and James Morehouse. There, the Morehouses joined with other prosperous Yankee families and founded the local Episcopal Church (founded by the Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel) in an attempt by English ecclesiastics to dilute the hostile sentiments toward the Crown that held sway in the powerful local Congregational Church. Redding was originally part of Fairfield, but had broken away shortly before the Revolution in 1767.

With the assistance of the Fairfield, Redding, and Newtown Historical Societies, Andrea arranged a Morehouse "reunion" where, for the first time in 223 years, Andrew Morehouse, of the Nova Scotia Morehouses, and his children, were reunited with the Fairfield Morehouses, represented by prominent local attorney H. Bradley Morehouse, with curators, town historians, local archaeologists, reporters, and members of my Early American class as witnesses. The reunion took place on our Election Day in November at the same home in which Daniel and his brothers, including Andrew's ancestor, James, were raised, that same saltbox Daniel was to later duplicate in New Brunswick--the house that is currently on display at Kings Landing. For three wonderful hours, we talked about colonial history and common origins. After ten generations, all had been forgiven.

Editor's note: For a further look at Kings Landing please see the colour photographs on the front and back cover.

Robert A. Liftig Ed.D. is currently a Writing Fellow at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. He also teaches Early American Literature at Fairfield University. He earned his doctorate in English at Columbia University. Bob lives with his wife, Inez, and two daughters in Westport, Connecticut. He loves Canada.