Researching United Empire Loyalists at the Queen’s University Archives
(a talk by Paul Banfield)

May 27, 2014

Our guest speaker was Paul Banfield, Queen’s University Archivist. Paul delivered a very interesting talk about the Archives — both the practicalities of location, parking and hours, and its mission to serve Queen’s University and the community. He gave some interesting facts:

The first document collected by the university for its Archives is a Quartermaster’s Paybook from Niagara during the War of 1812 — acquired in 1869.

The archives is currently housed in Kathleen Ryan Hall, a building formerly known as the “New Medical Building”. During the Second World War, the top two floors were loaned to the Department of National Defence, which performed top-secret experiments on potential germ warfare. Fortunately those germs are long gone!

The Archives holds 11 kilometres of boxed records, over 2 million images from the 1850s onward, around 100,000 architectural plans and drawings, and 15,000 audiovisual records.

The Archives houses Queen’s 1841 Royal Charter from Queen Victoria establishing the university on October 16, 1841. Surprisingly, it was not signed by the Queen, but by a bureaucrat named Leonard Edmunds.

For people researching United Empire Loyalists, there is much information available. The papers of Dr. H.C. Burleigh, who collected information on over 1,000 families who settled in the Kingston area, are now digitized and available online. The Archives also hold papers of Rev. Wm. Bell and Rev. Robert McDowall, early clergymen in this area; the Cartwright family, the Fairfield family, the Jones family 1787-1940s, the Parrot family, and the papers of Benjamin Seymour 1796-98. On microfilm they have the papers of Sir Frederick Haldimand and the Loyalist Studies Project. They also hold Tweedsmuir Histories compiled by members of area Womens’ Institutes.

Paul concluded with a slide show of recently-acquired photos taken about 1894 by photographer James W. Powell. We all enjoyed the views of buildings as they were 120 years ago.