Ebenezer Jones, the Loyalist who settled with his family in Saltfleet Township in the late 1780s, was born at Mile Square, Yonkers, New York about 1720. It was not long after this that his family moved to the Fishkill area, in Dutchess County east of the Hudson River.
According to the autobiography of the Reverend Peter Jones (1860), Ebenezer’s father, also named Ebenezer, was of “Welsh extraction [and] emigrated to Colonial New York and (finally) settled on the Hudson River prior to the American Revolution.” This is the only original statement found to date that relates back to the origins in America of the Jones family of Saltfleet.
At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Ebenezer and two of his sons, Stephen and David, and his brother William enrolled in a Loyalist corps, the King’s Orange Rangers. Later two other sons, Augustus and Phillip, each spent a day in Colonel James McClaughrey’s regiment of the New York Militia. It was on July 8, 1778 that they were “ordered into the service to the Western Frontiers of Ulster County.” They were likely conscripted.
William Bayard, a large property owner in Orange County and elsewhere in New York and New Jersey, was charged in 1776 with raising a regiment that would be known as “The King’s Orange Rangers”. It was to consist of ten companies of 550 men. His son, Captain Samuel Vetch Bayard, was one of the company captains. Ebenezer was enrolled in this company on Mar 5 1777, and mustered at Fort Paulus Hook on Aug 28 1777. He was listed on the muster rolls as “recruiting in the field” ( Feb 24 1778, Apr 24 1778, June 24 1778). The King’s Orange Rangers, later headquartered at Fort Kniphausen (Paulus Hook) near Kingsbridge (a bridge from Westchester to Manhattan) became so fractious that, in November 1778, when only 207 men remained, they were sent to Nova Scotia on garrison duty. In Nova Scotia, he company manage to recruit more people, thus returning to i a strength of nearly 600.
The King’s Orange Rangers were finally disbanded on October 29, 1783.
UE records in Nova Scotia list Ebenezer Jones as having a warrant for 250 acres of land, in 1787, in Annapolis County ( “Long Island”), Nova Scotia. Major Samuel Bayard also settled in this county and established a large estate at Wilmot Mountain. Other King’s Orange Rangers, including the Van Buskirks, also settled in Annapolis County.
The King’s Orange Rangers were also given 14,250 acres of land across the bay at Quaco Head, Nova Scotia (now New Brunswick). It seems likely that these properties were poor for farming and without much value.
Another Loyalist reference relates that Ebenezer Jones, Sergeant, was subsequently part of a group who left Nova Scotia and went to either Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, or the Bay of Quinte area of Upper Canada (and, in Ebenezer’s case, ultimately to the Home District of Upper Canada). Many were leaving Nova Scotia, likely because of the poor quality of the land. They were said to have “Niagara Fever”.
Although only about 200 have been accounted for, it is believed that many more left for there. After the poor farming of Dutchess, Orange, and Ulster counties, and then of Nova Scotia, the Niagara Peninsula must have seemed like heaven. It seems now that Ebenezer, William, and David all found their way to Niagara sometime in the late 1780s. It’s possible that William left earlier than the rest, as he ended up in Louth Township (Concession VI 15,16) and not at the Head of the Lake with the others.
The next we hear of Ebenezer Jones is that he had died intestate, killed in an accident with his son Joseph in October 1791. This was possibly during the construction of Augustus Jones’s home on the “Beach”, or his own or Philip’s (which may have became known as Red Hill house). At the time of his death, Ebenezer was in possession of 400 acres in Saltfleet (according to Augustus Jones’s 1791 annotated plan of Saltfleet Township). The identities of Ebenezer and one of his sons, also named Ebenezer, have been confused throughout certain documentation.
The ”Executive Council List” was made up in 1783, just after the conclusion of the war, and was published in 1784. It effectively left off many Loyalists who settled in Upper Canada west of Brockville, as initial settlement didn’t start there until about 1787. Many were then listed on a supplementary list that closed in 1797.
This abridged account, focusing on Ebenezer’s role as a Loyalist, was extracted from a more detailed work by Donald G. Jones UE, one of his descendants. The complete work can be read in pdf format here.
You can also read an account of the Jones, Gage, and Westbrook families, by the Reverend Charlotte Moore, here.
And you can see a larger version of the photo of the King’s Orange Rangers by clicking on the thumbnail to the right.