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The Letters: The Winslow Family Papers

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The letters transcribed on this website are part of a larger collection of Winslow Family Papers housed in the University of New Brunswick Archives. Consisting of 2,323 items and 13,098 pages covering the period from 1695 to 1866, the collection is one of the richest sources extant on the history of colonial North America.

While a few of the documents date back to the seventeenth century, the greater part of this collection consists of letters to and from Edward Winslow Junior (1746-1815), notebooks and reports that he authored, as well as public records of activities in which he took part. Included in the collection is the diary (1776-1787) of his cousin Benjamin Marston, a surveyor who was involved in settling the Loyalists in Shelburne, and on the St. John River, and papers relating to early efforts (1796-98) to establish the eastern boundary line between the United States and British territory in North America.

Not only do the Winslow Family Papers offer a wide window on the attitudes of the elite Loyalists - their family relationships, their political and social values, their dreams and disappointments - but also on the experiences of the ordinary Loyalist refugees and the Aboriginal peoples, Acadians, New England Planters and British who had made New Brunswick their home before the Loyalists arrived. The Winslow Family Papers are especially rich in evidence relating to the Black Loyalists and enslaved Blacks who formed a significant part of the Loyalist diaspora. The Winslows were themselves slave-owners and write about their enslaved servants.