Benjamin Willson
Benjamin Willson was a Loyalist during the American Revolution. He assisted the British Navy at their base in Staten Island. He was captured by the Colonialists and imprisoned in Frederick, Maryland in 1777 in the “Hessian Prison” at Fort Frederick. This prison was built in 1756, and was pressed back into service by the Continental […]
A Quaker Loyalist Moves to Canada
Benjamin Willson, son of a Scottish immigrant, was raised in Wantage, New Jersey (located in Sussex County, about 30 miles west of the Hudson and 60 miles northwest of New York City). He was a Quaker and member of the Hardwick Monthly Meeting in Sussex. The Revolutionary War presented a quandary for Quakers in America. […]
Palatine German Refugees
Annie Willson Bonner was quite adamant that the family’s heritage was Scottish, to the point that she became angry with her granddaughter on one occasion when the young girl wrote a school assignment claiming there might be some Irish in the family tree. Annie told the child that it would not do to have that […]
The Scottish Scholar and Missionary
George Keith was a Christian Quaker, later an Anglican missionary, born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1639 [1]. He earned his M.A. from Marischal College in Aberdeen in 1658 [2] and was intended to be ordained in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, but in 1662 became an adherent and leader of the new Quaker movement founded by […]