A few years ago, after I had moved back from Vancouver, I had become interested in the story of the Loyalists who had settled in Fredericton (before it was called Fredericton). Growing up with our house adjacent to a Loyalist cemetery, we had always been told that only Three to four people were buried there. The cemetery which has two tombstones and a Loyalist memorial. The story we knew was that two persons were buried by these older tombstones and one person or possibly two were buried beneath the memorial. The memorial told just part of the story of Loyalists who had passed away during their first Winter and that's about all we knew.
It turns out the story was much different.
Loyalist memorial located adjacent to Elmcroft place, Fredericton, NB
Late in the Summer of 1783 Loyalists to Britain were driven out of New York and took ships to the safety of Saint John known then as Fort Sainte Marie. As we know many of these Loyalist settlers after landing in Saint John once again boarded ships that took them up the Saint John river to a settlement that at the time was called 'Saint Anne's point' (A couple years later renamed 'Frederic's town or Fredericton)
As the story goes, the Loyalists had arrived at Saint Anne's point and due to an extremely early and intense Winter, over 30 men, women and children perished that Winter more than likely because of inadequate shelter and ruined crops brought on by the onset of the 'early and extremely intense' weather.
Now living in New Brunswick or even Atlantic Canada we're familiar with how brutal our Winter's can be. But was there something that made the Winter of 1783 particularly more intense and extreme than 'normal'? It appears that this just may be the case.
While watching a documentary on unraveling the mystery of mass graves in the UK, graves and deaths that would indicate that these people had died a particularly mysterious end, it was noted that in the Summer of 1783 volcanic activity in Iceland had been pretty intense and prolonged.
It was said in this documentary that the eruption of the Laki or Lakagígar volcano put out more lava in 3 months than the current eruptions in Hawaii have in 30 years. This eruption by the Fall of 1783 had spread so much debris into the atmosphere that all over the globe that it created somewhat of a ice age, from 1683 until around 1689 Winter's were quite harsh. In fact in 1685, it's said that the Mississippi river had ice in it. This abrupt change in climate had effects all over the Northern hemisphere. Much of history around this time talks about the "Summer's that never came" or "year long Winters".... So it can be now easily seen how when these Loyalists landed in Fredericton, that because of the change in the Northern atmospheric climate, which caused this early and extreme Winter which ended up being a virtual death sentence for these poor settlers that had already gone through so much.
Before I began to work as the music director at CHSR-FM and before the band had got back together, I had been working on kind of an investigation into the Loyalist cemetery on Waterloo Row, although it's more adjacent to Elmcroft place (off Waterloo Row) and is accessed via a dirt road that runs down along the Saint John river at the Morell baseball field.
I was shocked to learn that what we had learned growing up, with this Loyalist cemetery literally in our backyard (At one time, property plans showed it was part of the property, but was later sold to the city who intermittently provided grounds care of the place) had not 3 but close to 30 souls buried within. What else shocked me was that there is no record of WHO these people are, what names their families had. According to the story, they had been buried with haste and only wooden grave markers were put in place that eventually rotted away over the years. I've had the thought, that possibly some or all of these people may have been moved to whats 'formerly' known as the 'Loyalist cemetery' which is located between Brunswick and George streets in Fredericton. Through some investigation and study at the Fredericton archives, located at the University of New Brunswick, I had found out that the two gravestones at the cemetery were in fact two persons and possibly a dog buried at a later date, but only a few years after the original burials after the Winter of 1783. Now with more free time and with this new possible 'motive' to how these people perished, I may restart my investigation. I'd like, if it could happen to do a documentary, this would entail asking the University of New Brunswick archaeology dept and Geology dept to help out. I'd like to have ground penetrating radar scan the grounds to find out where these bodies lay, then, once I've hopefully found out the names of as many people buried there as I can, have the graves dug up and then see if some DNA could be extracted, that combined with my other studies to find the names of these people interred there, we could then find the living relatives to these people and possibly give them proper burials instead of being buried en masse.
It's an idea.
Here's a link to the source of my information and will give you, should you wish to explore further why I believe this eruption had an impact on the Loyalist settlers of 1783. These eruptions had a major impact on the global environment, and again, reading the provided link information will give you an idea.
https://www.wired.com/2013/06/local-and-global-impacts-1793-laki-eruption-iceland/
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