This R sheet will look at loyalists in Virginia during the Revolutionary War for a second time. However, this R sheet is more interested in Loyalist migrations before, during, and after the American Revolution. This historiography on loyalism, including the works of Maya Jasanoff and Mary Beth Norton, have typically focused on the lives of loyalists after the war and how their migrations and ideologies effected the cultures they came into contact with after the war. However, very few historians–regardless of state focus–are rarely interested in where loyalists came from vs. where they moved after the war.

In my data sheet, I listed birth location, war location, and post war location and separated everything by city, county, region, and nation. For instance, some loyalists would cite their city or town–mostly because a lot of Virginia’s larger cities are not a part of a larger county. Additionally, some loyalists would forgo the town name and only submit their county. Therefore, there are sperate columns. Also, the region = the state and nation = the country. While pre-war-city is always Virginia for region and America is always pre-war-nation, those change in the pre-war and post-war columns.

library(dplyr)
## 
## Attaching package: 'dplyr'
## The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
## 
##     filter, lag
## The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
## 
##     intersect, setdiff, setequal, union
library(ggplot2)
library(tidyr)
library(stringr)
loyal <- read.csv("val_clean.csv",
                  header = TRUE)

First, I am interested in observing what birth city the majority of loyalists were born in.

ggplot(loyal, aes(x = birth_city)) +
  geom_bar(fill = "purple")

This bar graph reveals that loyalist were born all over the British Empire–however, the majority of which being in Virginia. It appears that the Tidewater–including Norfolk, Suffolk, and Portmouth–make up the largest population of loyalist births. This is very similar to what Adele Haste has argued.

However, once everyone was settled in Virginia after the Seven Years War, where did they live?

ggplot(loyal, aes(x= pre_war_city, fill = sex)) +
  geom_bar(width = 1) +
  labs(title = "Pre War Cities of Virginia Loyalists",
       x= "Pre War Cities")

This chart reveals that many loyalists still lived in the Tidewater before the Revolution began. However, populations have grown in cities such as Williamsburg and Richmond.

But what about the post war?

ggplot(loyal, aes(x= post_war_city, fill = sex)) +
  geom_bar(width = 1) +
labs(title = "Where Virginia Loyalists Were Exiled",
       x= "Post War Cities")

It looks as though the vast majority of Virginia’s loyalists moved to London after the war–as already shown in the previous R sheet. However, I’ve put it here too for reference.

ggplot(loyal, aes(x = birth_city, y = pre_war_city)) +
geom_count(color = "blue") +
  labs(title = "Where loyal Virginians were Bron VS Where they Lived",
       x= "Birth City",
       y= "Pre War Residence")

Interestingly, this count shows us that quite a few loyalists who lived in Norfolk during the war moved to London–which was the headquarters of the Loyalist Calims Commission. The Norfolk loyalist community was close-knit during the war and it appears that many of them moved to the same location together. Since Norfolk seems to dominate the geographic location for the majority of these 100 loyalists, I’m interested in whether or not their numbers jive with the only book written on Virginia loyalists by Adele Haste–which centers mostly on Norfolk.

loyal_norfolk <- loyal %>%
  filter(pre_war_city =="Norfolk")

First, as stated in the last R sheet, the majority of Norfolk loyalists served as merchants–as previously argued by Haste. However, I’m interested in their other occupations.

ggplot(loyal_norfolk, aes(x= occupation)) +
geom_bar(fill = "purple")+
  labs(title = "Loyalist Occupations in Norfolk", 
        x= "Occupations")

This chart shows that merchants not only dominated loyalist occupations, but that the only career second to being a merchant was being a wife.

However, Haste also argued that not only are Virginia loyalists mostly from Norfolk and mostly merchants, she posited that the vast majority of these Norfolk merchants were born in Scotland and only immigrated to the region after the Seven Years War. Let’s see Haste was correct again.

ggplot(loyal_norfolk, aes(birth_nation, fill = sex)) +
  geom_bar(width = 1) +
  labs(title = "Birth Home of Norfolk Loyalists", 
       x= "Birth Homes")

WHOA! Not only was Haste wrong in her assumption, she was off by a landslide. Not only were almost all of Norfolks merchants born in Virginia, those who immigrated were mostly from England. In fact–only one of these Norfolk loyalists from my “100” sample ever lived in Scotland before the war.

Let’s be even more specific and look at birth city:

ggplot(loyal_norfolk, aes(x= birth_city)) +
  geom_bar(fill = "purple") +
  labs(title = "Norfolk Birth Cities",
       x= "Birth Cities")

Not only were the vast majority born in America–they were born in Norfolk. If when the data set is complete and follows in this trend, these charts will completely disprove Haste’s assessment that almost all of Norfolk’s loyalists were born in Scotland. While the chart is simple, it’s findings are huge for the historiography. Many historians have dismissed Virginia when it comes to loyalist studies because of how influential Haste’s work was in 1982. Since many historians agreed that the majority of Virginia’s loyalists were new immigrants, few have paid attention to the region. If the largest city of loyalists were actually born their and not elsewhere in the Empire, it completely destroys prior assesments.

However, where did they move after the war?

ggplot(loyal_norfolk, aes(x = post_war_city)) +
geom_bar(fill = "purple") +
  labs(title = "Where People Moved to From Norfolk",
       x= "Post War Cities")

Unsurprisingly, the majority of Norfolk Loyalists became exhiles in London after the war. If Haste’s assesment was correct and many of these loyalists immigrated right before the Revolution from Scotland, it would make sense that they would just simply move back to Scotland. This chart reveals the opposite.

Before the war was over, many loyalists across Virginia were forced to leave their homes before the war was over. Before they could make it back to Britain quite a few made their way through New York where the British Army was stationed for the entire war. However, how many of Virginia’s loyalists actually went through New York before being exiled elsewhere?

loyal %>% count(new_york)
## Source: local data frame [3 x 2]
## 
##   new_york     n
##      (lgl) (int)
## 1    FALSE    34
## 2     TRUE    21
## 3       NA    45

While some Virginia Tories did not track their migrations in their loyalist claims, quite a few did. Suprisingly, it reveals that more loyalists did not go through New York vs. those who did. The historiography on loyalism in New York emphasizes the populations moving from the South who went through New York City. The migrations from Virginia are significant, but still not a majority.

loyal_norfolk %>% count(new_york)
## Source: local data frame [2 x 2]
## 
##   new_york     n
##      (lgl) (int)
## 1    FALSE    16
## 2     TRUE     8

Out of Norfolk, only 8 loyalists actually went through New York instead of evacuating to exile ships for Britain.