"Fraser, born in Scotland, worked in the engineering department in New York, but he, his four brothers, and their families had to flee revolutionary mobs that were confiscating property and tarring and feathering the war's losers. Shelburne was overcrowded with the displaced-both Black and white-living on rations from the Crown while they urgently cut down trees to build houses for themselves in their new home."
"Fraser died soon after he arrived in Shelburne, leaving a son, John. The boy was only three when his mother also passed away. Though he had four uncles in town, life must have been hard for him because when he was twelve or thirteen, he stowed away on a fisherman's sailboat bound for Saint Margarets Bay, up the coast toward Halifax."
"That fisherman, James Boutillier, took the boy in. The Boutilliers, French protestants, had come to Lunenburg in 1750 to escape the threat of persecution by Catholics. John became part of the family, and he married Boutillier's daughter, Susanna, in 1809. When their daughter, Sarah, was nineteen, she married Thomas Maher, a twenty-year-old Irish cobbler recently arrived from County Kilkenny, where Catholics were living under British oppression."
William Fraser, a Scottish-born engineer, arrived in Shelburne on May 4, 1783, among about 3,000 Loyalists fleeing New York after the American Revolution. Shelburne was overcrowded and dependent on Crown rations while settlers cut trees to build homes. Fraser died soon after arrival, and his son John became orphaned and later stowed away on a fishing sailboat to Saint Margarets Bay. James Boutillier took John in; the Boutilliers were French Protestants who had come to Lunenburg in 1750 to escape Catholic persecution. John married Susanna Boutillier in 1809; their daughter Sarah married Irish Catholic Thomas Maher. Descendants of these refugee families found prosperity, peace, and enduring ties to the sea in Nova Scotia.
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