New Brunswick Years

Abstract

The effort by Zephaniah Kingsley Sr. to establish a mercantile business in a frontier area of Nova Scotia, where thousands of Loyalists settled after being banished from their homes in the British colonies after the American Revolution, is the subject of this chapter. As the population grew, a new province of New Brunswick was carved from the wilderness, and Kingsley Sr. thrived in this environment. He again established a successful business, purchasing skins, furs, timber, and fish for export to England and the West Indies. Sometimes loaded aboard ships that he purchased, the ships returned with English cloth and manufactured goods and Caribbean sugar and coffee to stock his retail stores at St. John and Fredericton, New Brunswick. An economic downturn circa 1790 prompted him to move his family to Wilmington, North Carolina, where he died within months of the resettlement. Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. did not move with the family to North Carolina. He learned the intricacies of Atlantic commerce and Caribbean trade aboard his father’s vessels, and became captain of his own ship. As late as December 1793, he was a resident of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, engaged in the Caribbean coffee trade.