John Howe (loyalist)
He was born in Boston, Massachusetts Bay colony, the son of Joseph Howe, a tin plate worker of Puritan ancestry, and Rebeccah Hart.
It was the consequences of this conflict that required the British to demand greater taxes from, and assert greater control over, their American colonies and it was the consequences of this conflict that raised and disappointed the English-American colonists' expectations about their opportunities for expansion, all of which contributed to the colonists' determination to revolt against an increasingly costly, authoritarian, and obstructive British rule.
John Howe's family were converts to a religious sect called the Sandemanians, whose best-known member was Michael Faraday, the scientist.
John Glas (1695–1773), who had been the Presbyterian minister at Tealing, Perthshire, Scotland, sought a return to a "New Testament Christianity" that included Agapēs, pacifism, good works, charity, communal property, as well as a strong opposition to state control over the church.
[3] He arrived in Boston, where he helped his nephew get established as a bookseller, and then moved to Danbury, Connecticut, where he lived until his death in April, 1771.
[8] On April 19, 1775, the opening battle of the American Revolution occurred when the British forces raided inland from Boston to Concord "to destroy a Magazine of Military Stores deposited there."
After the Battle of Lexington and Concord news of the event quickly spread to the other colonies and American patriots came in great numbers to lay siege to Boston.
On June 17, 1775, the American forces seized a hill across the Charles river to the north of Boston in Charlestown and began building fortifications upon it from which they would be able to fire upon the town and harbour.
In later years, he described his experiences at the battle to his youngest son, Joseph, in which he watched as General Sir William Howe led the final bayonet charge up the hill "with the bullets flying through the tails of his coat."
After the battle, John told of aiding "a young officer whose leg had been amputated and who he cured of a raging fever by letting him drink a bucket of cold water."
Realizing that taking the hill would be too costly, and that the Americans would soon have cannon in place, the British decided to evacuate the town of all of their forces and the loyalists.
[11] On March 17, 1776, the last troops and loyalists boarded ships in Boston harbour and set sail for Halifax, Nova Scotia.
John Howe was named in the Massachusetts Banishment Act of 1778, possibly as a result of his work as printer for the British forces in Newport, Rhode Island.
[16] Sometime during 1780, John Howe and his young family, along with his brother-in-law William Minns, quit New York for Halifax, Nova Scotia.
About half of the Halifax Journal was dedicated to foreign news and essays reprinted from European publications, there was a short Halifax section that covered shipping news and local events, and it reported on issues debated in the Assembly as well as laws and proclamations that were not covered in the Nova Scotia Royal Gazette.
[21] Note other spying claims regarding a John Howe, denied in Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online,[22] "Although he was not, as one writer states, the John Howe who acted as a spy for Lieutenant-General Thomas Gage behind the rebel lines in 1775..." In 1803, as part of the British blockade of trade with French-controlled ports, which was during the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy searched American ships trading with continental Europe and impressed sailors onboard that were alleged to be British deserters.
Fearing that these events presaged war, Sir George Prevost, the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, arranged for a spy to tour the New England states and "observe whatever may be agitating."
[23] Howe traveled through the American seaboard states, arriving in Boston on April 22, 1808, under the guise of visiting family and friends.
This mission included accompanying Baron Erskine to interviews with President Thomas Jefferson and President-elect James Madison.
"[26] After his brief stint as a volunteer spy, John returned to his usual work as printer, loyalist writer and postmaster in Halifax.
Joseph won an acquittal in the case on March 3, 1835, in a victory that was popularly seen as a triumph of freedom of the press and a blow to the corrupt governance of some of the magistrates.
