Meeting of The Officers of the Garrison of St John and Fredricton on Long Island, in the River St. John, New Brunswick (circa 1790)
The building in the middle with two chimneys is Leonard Slipp’s inn on the St. John River. He called the spot Long Island, probably from his New York experiences, and the inn Blizzard. Leonard was a United Empire Loyalist and my paternal grandmother’s Great Great Grandfather.
Special thanks to Rick Crume and Carol Brown Parker for this important family heirloom.
Click on thumbnail to view the description on the back of the frame.
Update: A colour version of this lithograph is available from the New Brunswick Museum.
In an email I received this evening from Marke Slipp, he writes:
In looking through some of my information regarding this, seeing the images and all, I recall what George Wm. Slipp told me about Leonard Slip(p)’s BLIZZARD: It was halfway between Fredricton, which would become the capital of the province, and Saint John. the economic and transportation center. Many people would dock their boats and spend the evening consuming food & grog, then overnight before finishing their trek the next day. This happened through the year when the river was flowing. When it froze in the winter, there would be horses, wagons and sleds (as you can see in the image).
Apparently in the spring, when the ice dams formed and the rivers flooded, the level of the water would go up to the second floor of the stone building. People in boats would hook up to the building, enter the second floor do what business (or pleasure) they had to do before continuing to their destinations. You’ll note the windows for the first floor are considerably higher than for the second floor, to accommodate the floods. At least this is what I was led to believe.
Now I know genealogists like to have things like this verified, and I understand completely, but I cannot give verification to the above tale. It does come from a goodhearted source though.
[...] Also, Carol, it might be of some interest, or at least a clue, that the Blizzard painting (‘Meeting of the Officers of the garrison …” etc) was done by a J. Hewlett in 1824, and he was presumably a relative of the Hewlett Leonard Slip owned land with up by Queenstown…or it’s an easy speculation, at any rate. You can view this image at: http://www.journeythroughthepast.com/2007/03/11/the-blizzard-inn-2/ [...]
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The comment’s server IP (69.163.154.201) doesn’t match the comment’s URL host IP (69.163.199.7) and so is spam.