Credits of this page comes from the Short Talk Bulletin (September, 2002) "Loyalists in the Revolution"

     Let me cite a family named Vanderburgh, a Dutch family that had settled in New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1653. About sixty years later they moved up the Hudson to Poughkeepsie.  In 1776, there were two brothers. James was 47 at the outbreak of the great rebellion. He was Colonel of the 5th Regiment Dutchess County militia; and he served as a Deputy to the Third Provincial Congress in 1776. George Washington's diary mentions that he stayed at Colonel Vanderburgh's home twice in 1781. His gravestone carries the square and compasses.

    His older Brother Henry was known as Judge Vanderburgh. He was a Justice of the Inferior Court and a Warden of Christ Church, Poughkeepsie. The minister of his church, the Rev. John Beardsley, was a native of Connecticut, educated at Yale and Columbia. The minutes of the Masonic Lodge at Poughkeepsie record that he preached the St. John's Day Sermon in 1771, 1772, and 1774, and on one occasion the brethren formally passed a vote of thanks and presented him with a large folio Bible.

    Rev. Mr. Beardsley was opposed to the Revolution, and received "repeated insults" from those who supported it. His church services were suspended on July 13, 1776. When he persisted in his refusal to take the Oath of Allegiance to the State, he was confined to his farm, being permitted only "to go and Visit the sick & Baptize Infants where requested."

    In his troubles, Beardsley was associated with Judge Henry Vanderburgh, whom we mentioned a minute ago. Early in December 1777, the Commission for Detected and Defeating Conspiracies in New York reported that the more radical revolutionaries might actually inflict physical harm on Mr. Beardsley and Mr. Vanderburgh, and they therefore requested permission to send them through the lines to New York, which was in British hands. Finally on December 13, the Governor of New York granted permission for the Reverend John Beardsley and his family, and Mr. Vanderburgh and his family, "with their Wearing Apparel and necessary Bedding for the Family and Provision for their Passage," to go down the Hudson to the city in a sloop-of-war under a flag of truce.

    In June 1778, in New York, Beardsley became Chaplain of the newly organized Loyal American Regiment. Soon afterwards he was initiated into a Masonic Lodge in New York. In 1781, when a new Provincial Grand Lodge was formed, Bro. Beardsley was unanimously chosen Junior Grand Warden, an office which he filled until the Loyalist left the city in 1783. Before the departure, he and seventeen other clergymen met together and signed a "Plan of Religious and Literary Institution for the Province of Nova Scotia." This eventually led to the foundation of the University of King's College, Halifax.

    Together and many other Loyalists Rev. John Beardsley (aged 51) and Judge Henry Vanderburgh (aged 66) gave up everything; they lost their homes and property, and went into exile, settling in the unoccupied part of what is now New Brunswick. Beardsley was "the first clergyman of any denomination to minister to the spiritual needs of the exiles." On March 9, 1784, the Masons invited him to become the first Master of the earliest lodge formed under local authority on this part of the province.

    He built the first church to be consecrated in the province. He continued active in Masonic affairs as late as 1803, when he preached the St. John's Day sermon on the text Hebrews 13:1, "Let brotherly love continue.:" He died in 1809.

    Beardsley is regarded as the Founder of Freemasonry in the Province of New Brunswick. In 1916 the Grand Lodge of New Brunswick unveiled a brass memorial tablet to his memory in the church where he is buried, and in 1968, it instituted the Rev. John Beardsley medallion, awarded every year for outstanding contributions to the Grand Lodge and to the advancement of Freemasonry.