Loyalist Routes. Southern Hastings County was settled by people who were essentially refugees from the American Revolution, also known as the American Revolutionary War. For various reasons they retained their loyalty to the British colonial system rather than embark on the republican route favoured by the revolutionaries. Deprived of their sources of income, harassed and intimidated by revolutionaries, a large percentage chose to flee northward. Of the 70,000 Loyalists who fled the 13 colonies, about 50,000 moved northward to the British colonies of Quebec and Nova Scotia. Many of them were professionals who, by revolutionary law, had lost the right to practise their professions.