Hannah Ingraham (1772-1869) was eleven years old in the fall of 1783 when her family moved to what in the following year would become the colony of New Brunswick. Late in her long life, she recounted her migration experiences to the wife of the local Church of England rector, who transcribed them.
Early in the twentieth century, M.V. Tippet read her mother’s transcription of Hannah’s story to the Women’s Historical Society in Toronto and it was subsequently published in the society’s transactions.
The original transcript was deposited in the Dominion Archives (now Library and Archives Canada), but it can no longer be found there. In the early 1930s, R.P. Gorham transcribed this version of Hannah’s narrative from the original manuscript for publication in the Saint John Telegraph, 23, 26-29 December 1933. It differs only in small details from the earlier published version. Gorham’s transcription is produced here with two instances where the accounts differ signaled by curly brackets and punctuation silently brought into consistency.
David Bent and Michelle McDonald, student assistants with the Loyalist Women in New Brunswick project, helped to transcribe and edit the Gorham manuscript.
“The Narrative of Hannah Ingraham, Loyalist Colonist at St. Anne’s Point, October, 1783, Edited and with Notes by R.P. Gorham, B.S.A. June 1933,” is housed in the University of New Brunswick Archives and Special Collections department.
M.V. Tippet’s published version, “Story of U.E. Loyalist,” Women’s Canadian Historical Society Transactions, vol. 2 (1912): 24-31, can be found in the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, MC 300, MS22/22 and has been re-published as “Reminiscences of Hannah Ingraham, 1772-1868 [9],” Generations: The Journal of the New Brunswick Genealogical Society, 19, 4 (Winter 1997): 26-29.
The Narrative of Hannah Ingraham
See Historical Context for a short biography of Hannah Ingraham.
The image gallery features several views of the Ingraham home and a photograph of Hannah.