Pollard, Benjamin

From: An Island Refuge- Loyalists and Disbanded Troops on The Island of Saint John, The Abegweit Branch of UELAC, 1983

  • PRIVATE BENJAMIN POLLARD was a married man when the last muster of His Majesty’s late company of Saint John Volunteers was ordered in 1784. His one hundred acre grant from Governor Patterson was on Bedeque Bay. We have reason to believe that Benjamin Pollard embarked at Boston for Halifax with the British Army following the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1776, and made his way to the Island of Saint John where he later served with the Saint John Volunteers. He married Catherine Vallier, the daughter of Antoine Vallier, one of Samuel Holland’s first settlers at Tryon. Family tradition also holds that Catherine was a companion to Mrs. Holland, widow of the Surveyor General, and that she married the coachman, Pollard. In 1786 Benjamin Pollard bought Lot Number Fifty in the Second Hundred at Charlotte Town from Maurice Quinlan for $64.00. At least three of the Pollard children were baptized at Charlotte Town by Rev. Theophilius DesBrisay.