Spring SAVY 2019, Day 5 – Mystery and History (5th/6th)
Our sleuths put in such great work today after they disembarked their canoes! Their attentiveness made today’s adventure so much fun!
We picked up with Nov. 25, 1783, Evacuation Day in New York City, to consider a new perspective on the revolution: the Loyalist perspective. We discussed how as Americans our natural perspective is a national and patriot perspective of the war. Today, we switched that up a bit as we investigated the larger question: Where did the Loyalists go after 1783.
Our detectives helped me out with the background info as we brainstormed about who the loyalists were. We focused on the loyalists as individuals in the thirteen rebellion who desired to remain within the British Empire, whatever their perspective on grievances about things like the Stamp Act etc. We also reminded ourselves of the great claims in North America that Britain had, including the west to the Mississippi, East and West Florida, and Canada.
From there, our detectives became experts on three different groups of loyalists and their voyages as they unpacked the following stories:
1) William Taylor
2) Mary Loring
3) The Loyalist Refugee
After engaging the following questions, our detectives presented their findings to one another for a broader understanding of all the places the loyalists ended up.
Who are the loyalists in your story?
Where did they go?
Why?
What was their experience?
Other comments and observations…
And so we learned about loyalist refugees in Canada, The Floridas, and those who made it to Britain.
We finished up by learning about loyalists who ended up as far away as the Caribbean, Bahamas, Africa, India, and Australia. What did all of these places have in common? They were part of the British Empire. The Empire had some ideals about relocating these refugees and incentives it hoped to implement, but we discovered from our stories, that reality was usually much different than the grandiose programs and projects of a world wide empire.
For more from the foremost expert on the loyalists, click here.
Just one more week together! Time flies so quickly for detective historians!
Frances Kolb