merchant military politician Soldier
George Leonard was born at Plymouth, Massachussets, the son of the Rev. Nathaniel and Priscilla (Rogers) Leonard, and the nephew of Major, later Colonel, George Leonard, a judge and member of the Council of the province. He was descended from James Leonard who emigrated from Pontypool, Wales, in the seventeenth century.
During the blockade of Boston Leonard served as a lieutenant of the Associated Loyalists, besides fitting out ten vessels to aid the British. In March 1776 he accompanied the Loyalists to Halifax and was not overlooked in the Banishment Act. In the spring of 1778 he was with the troops in Rhode Island. He left Newport to receive Burgoyne's army but was forced into Plymouth Harbor by bad weather. Soon he sailed for Boston with a fleet of provisions. As navy agent and contractor for the Associated Refugees in Rhode Island he furnished the vessels for their expeditions on Long Island Sound in 1779, being given £2, 000 in advance.
At Martha's Vineyard in September of the same year he had the tax collector seized by one of his naval officers and permitted the inhabitants to send a representative to Boston who obtained a suspension by the Assembly of the payment of taxes. He also destroyed eleven American vessels and exacted from the Islanders provisions and fuel for the garrison at Newport. With Col. Edward Winslow he warned the people of Nantucket that the renewal of their hostile activities would be punished. At the end of 1780 Leonard was appointed one of eight directors of the recently revived Associated Loyalists, who thereafter carried on privateering operations from Manhattan, Long Island, and Staten Island. Resigning in September 1782, he was granted an allowance of £200 a year.
In the following April he wrote from Brooklyn requesting a six months' advance of his annuity in order to remove to Nova Scotia with his family of fifteen persons, including servants. He was next named one of five agents to distribute lands at the mouth of the River St. John to the inpouring refugees. Remonstrances against these agents, including Leonard, who had drawn a large lot on the harbor, led them to submit voluntarily to a trial at Halifax before the governor and Council, who decided on August 3, 1784, that they had been fair and impartial in their dealings.
When Parr Town was incorporated in May 1785 as the city of St. John, Leonard was appointed by the governor of New Brunswick alderman and chamberlain. In 1786 he was made superintendent of trade and fisheries for the coasts of the Maritime Provinces and neighboring islands. In this office he was energetic in suppressing illicit trade in Passamaquoddy Bay and asserting British rights to its islands. In 1790 he was appointed to the Council, in which he served thirty-six years. As senior councilor Leonard would have succeeded to the government on the death of Lieut. -Gov. George B. Smyth in April 1823, but he declined on account of his infirmities. He died on April 1, 1826, surviving his wife scarcely two months. Both were buried at Sussex Vale, where their monument still stands.
Leonard distinguished himself as a loyalist during the American Revolutionary War. He commanded a fleet of ships which raided coastal towns in 1779. During his tenure at the Council, he labored for the education and conversion of the Indians to the Protestant faith and built the Indian Academy at Sussex Vale.
Leonard married Sarah Thacher, a native of Boston, on October 14, 1765.
