2. Contributors
  3. Bates, Walter

Walter Bates
1760-1842

Walter Bates was born on 14 March 1760 in Darien, Connecticut.  In 1783, Bates joined the Loyalists who accepted King George III’s offer of 200 acres of land in Nova Scotia, the name for a territory that included present-day New Brunswick. Bates kept a record of the vessel’s journey and its passengers’ early settlement in the posthumously published Kingston and the Loyalists of the “Spring Fleet” of A.D. 1783 (1889).  Bates settled in Kingston, now a small community on the Belleisle Creek of Kings County. He was involved in the founding of Kingston’s Trinity Anglican Church. Bates published The Mysterious Stranger; or, memoirs of Henry More Smith; alias Henry Frederick Moon in 1817 in New Haven, Connecticut. Bates died on 11 February 1842.

Source

LeBrun, Sharisse. “Sheriff Walter Bates” New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, Spring 2016. Accessed 17 April 2023.

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Kingston

Archival Material

A copy of the Bates Family papers is on microfilm is also available from the University of New Brunswick Loyalist collection.

  • Location
    Archives of Ontario
    View Archival Record
    Retrieval Number
    F 475
    Date Range of Material
    1789-1859, 1895 (mfm made in 1974)
    Extent

    1 reel of microfilm

    Scope and Content Note

    Fonds consists of the personal correspondence of the Bates family. A number of papers are those of Walter Bates (1764-1842), who became High Sheriff of Kings County, New Brunswick. The papers relate primarily to the attempts of certain Kings County residents to have him dismissed from the position of Sheriff, and to his interest in an inmate of a Toronto jail, whom he believed to be Henry Moore Smith, an "escape artist" on whom he had written a book. The correspondence relates information on religion, farming and politics in New Brunswick, the growth of Saint John, and family news.

  • Location
    Fredericton Region Museum
    View Archival Record
    Retrieval Number
    MS 17-22
    Date Range of Material
    1806
    Extent

    1 receipt

    Scope and Content Note

    Receipt for Sheriff Walter Bates to Michael Clark for monies received for John Lester; Kingston, November 25, 1806.

Frontispiece of "The Mysterious Stranger" by Walter Bates

Frontispiece of The Mysterious Stranger by Walter Bates

Credit

"Sheriff Walter Bates." New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, Spring 2016. Accessed 6 June 2023.

See the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia entry.