Chipman, Ward

DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Phillip Buckner, “CHIPMAN, WARD (1754-1824),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 6, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/chipman_ward_1754_1824_6E.html
DCB profile notes:
- Lawyer, office holder, jp, politician, judge, and colonial administrator; b. 30 July 1754 in Marblehead, Mass., sixth child of John Chipman and Elizabeth Brown; m. 24 Oct. 1786 Elizabeth Hazen, and they had one child, Ward; d. 9 Feb. 1824 in Fredericton.
- Ward Chipman was the scion of a distinguished Massachusetts family. His father was a fourth-generation and his mother a fifth-generation American. Both his paternal grandfather and his father had attended Harvard College and in 1766 Chipman began his studies there. A precocious and studious youth, he was deferential to the college authorities and in 1769 was awarded a prize for his dedication to learning.
- John Chipman bequeathed to his son a small estate but little capital. Fortunately, John Chipman had been popular among his colleagues, and Jonathan Sewell, attorney general of Massachusetts and advocate general of the Vice-Admiralty Court in Boston, solicited contributions to an interest-free loan to enable Ward to complete his degree at Harvard.
- Although many of his contemporaries at the colonial bar supported the patriot cause or at least equivocated, Chipman’s loyalties were never seriously in doubt. The impecunious heir of a family on the fringe of the Massachusetts social élite, he did not have the benefit of an extensive estate nor did he have the capital to engage in trade; thus he had to depend on his profession and he looked to the crown for rapid advancement in it.
- Moreover, his mentor, Jonathan Sewell, was devoted to the loyalist cause and Chipman naturally followed his example. In September 1774 Sewell’s home in Cambridge had been attacked by a “mob”; Chipman had participated in its defence and then retreated with the Sewell family to Boston. Early in 1775, while establishing himself in his profession there, he assisted Daniel Leonard in the preparation of a series of anti-revolutionary tracts which Leonard published under the pseudonym Massachusettensis.
- In the summer of 1777 he therefore eagerly accepted a minor post in New York City as deputy to the muster master general of the loyalist forces, Edward Winslow. Chipman assumed his position in July 1777.
- In July he was one of a group of 55 loyalists who signed a petition requesting grants of 5,000 acres of land apiece in Nova Scotia. When the petition of the 55 aroused a storm of protest from the rest of the loyalist community, Chipman withdrew his name, but he asked Edward Winslow to find him a desirable tract of land at the mouth of the Saint John River.
- Despite fits of despondency, Chipman continued to believe that, if properly governed, New Brunswick would become “one of the most valuable and important parts of His Majesty’s North American Possessions.” In 1824 he called upon the members of the legislature to remember that “we are the Survivors and Descendents” of those settlers who had created New Brunswick “as an Asylum for his [majesty’s] faithful and loyal Subjects.” Over time Chipman’s muted anti-Americanism and moderate conservatism hardened into an ideology of loyalism that profoundly influenced the provincial culture of New Brunswick. In a very real sense his greatest achievement was the role he played in passing on this ideology to the second-generation loyalist gentry, who continued to uphold “the principles of their Fathers.”
United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=1438
Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8663090/ward-chipman