Welcome

The history of the Harris family can trace its roots back to the loyalists of the English crown on both sides. From the White family on Grace Harris's side to the Bates family on Franks Harris's side, all ended up in Canada after the American Revolution. They helped discover and settle a good portion of what is now New Brunswick, Canada.

 

Searching For Our Place

The desire to understand our origins and our roots is a persuasive drive in many of us. We cannot help being curious, and some of us get mildly obsessed with building the picture of our ancestors and their successes and failures. The interest is kindled for want of knowledge or out of curiosity, researching some unknown names from previous generations. It develops into an interest in the social and historical context of their place in the evolution of our modern civilization. This site is intended to provide a knowledge bank for all those that are interested.

To understand the Harris family history, you have to start back at the time of the American Revolution.

The fighting actually continued, in the back country of the South in particular. And it was in regions like that that loyalists still tried to fight for the empire that they believed in. ...

It's a part of the war that we tend to not think too much about or learn about in school. But there was a lot of bloodshed, and particularly in the South. And gangs of revolutionaries, gangs of loyalists, would attack each other, go to each other's plantations. In fact, some of the big battles in the South happened after the surrender at Yorktown.

And so, when the British pulled out in city after city in the United States, up to tens of thousands of loyalists sometimes went with the retreating army to Britain and other parts of the British Empire. ... About half of the loyalists who left the United States ended up going north to Canada, settling in the province of Nova Scotia and also becoming pioneering settlers in the province of New Brunswick.

But who are these people? Not just Crown Loyalists, but who are they as a person, a family and a friend? What were their lives like and how do we relate to them generations later?

Hopefully this site, with it's hundreds of photo's, documents and stories will help tell their stories. Hopefully it will put us closer to those where we came from and how the Harris ancestors were part of a group of people who heavily influenced the politics and culture of what would become Canada.