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Who was Edward Jessup
Major Edward Jessup was born in Stamford, Connecticut in December 1735. Later, as a boy, Edward moved with his family to central New York. In 1759 as a Captain in the New York Provincial Corps, Jessup raised a company of men and fought against the French i n the 1759 campaign. Edward and his brother Ebenezer soon become prominent business men in the Albany area. Edward was a close friend of Sir William Johnson and was a Justice of the Peace in the City and County of Albany. When the American Revolution broke out Edward and Ebenezer remained loyal to King George and raised a Corps of Loyalists in the central New York region. "Jessup's Corps" fought with the Burgoyne Campaign of 1777 and surrendered with the rest of General Burgoyne's force at Saratoga. The corps was restructured in 1781 and renamed the Loyal Rangers or "Jessup's" Rangers. At the end of the American Revolution in 1783 Edward Jessup and the officers and men of the Loyal Rangers received land grants on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River and in the Kingston area. Jessup, as did the other Loyalists, made significant personal sacrifices in order to build new homes and communities in a wilderness. Despite the hardshisps, Edward Jessup build a new home and founded the Town of Prescott on his land grant. In 1810 he began private construction of the building that would become in 1812 the Stockade Barracks. Jessup would see a second war with the United States. He died in February 1816 after having made a distinctive mark on a new country.
ŠJessup Food & Heritage, Limited
P.O. Box 446, 356 East Street
Prescott, Ontario K0E 1T0
telephone: 1-800-882-6704
fax: 613-536-0456
This page was last updated: Sunday, December 01, 2002