About the LRN

Why UNB?

With members drawn from a wide range of interests and institutions, the Loyalist Research Network (LRN) is hosted by the University of New Brunswick (UNB). Why UNB?

UNB is indisputably the world leader in research resources relating to the Loyalist diaspora. The Harriet Irving Library (HIL) houses the largest collection of Loyalist Papers in the world - The Loyalist Collection - consisting of more than 650 separate record collections, 3400 microfilm reels, and 700 microfiche. Many of the records are family papers that chronicle the Loyalist refugee experience throughout the North Atlantic world. The collection also houses a wide assortment of public sources, church and military records, newspapers, and published works on the Loyalists. The network is indebted to the efforts of reference librarian (now retired) Kathryn Hilder for assembling the collection and designing and composing The Loyalist Collection Inventory, and to Christine Jack, Manager of Microforms at HIL, for continuing to administer and promote the collection.

The LRN also builds on a longstanding research focus at UNB on colonial history and the North Atlantic world, dating back to the work of A.G. Bailey, W.S. MacNutt, Stephen Patterson, Wallace Brown, Murray Young, Ann Gorman Condon, Thomas Condon, Phillip Buckner, T.W. Acheson, and E.R. Forbes. This foundational research has been followed up by the work of Margaret Conrad, Gwendolyn Davies, David Bell, David Black, and others. The Brigadier Milton Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society at UNB also has a North Atlantic focus and an ambitious publishing project on New Brunswick’s military heritage - the New Brunswick Military Heritage Project - that draws upon resources from the New Brunswick Museum, the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, and Parks Canada.

Moreover, UNB promotes the publishing of research on Atlantic Canada through the academic journal Acadiensis and the Acadiensis Press, as well as digital initiatives such as The Atlantic Canada Virtual Archives, a collaborative effort between UNB`s Electronic Text Centre and the Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies.

These research and publishing initiatives at UNB are supported by a considerable public interest in the Loyalists amongst committed local historians such as the Stephen Davidson and Wallace Hale, and members of the New Brunswick Branch of the United Empire Loyalists' Association of Canada. The LRN also hopes to work closely with local heritage institutions, including the New Brunswick Museum, the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, the York-Sunbury Museum, King's Landing (a historical site devoted to Loyalist history), and the Loyalist House (a heritage home in Saint John).

Over the past thirty years, there have been initiatives to study the region’s Aboriginal peoples, Acadians, and New England Planters, as well as Yorkshire settlers, Scots, and Irish immigrants, but the Loyalists have yet to find their place. Given the primary resources in and near UNB, and the fact that New Brunswick was created as a separate colony in 1784 to accommodate the Loyalist influx, the University of New Brunswick is the logical site for such an initiative.