Joseph Galloway - Exile in Britain

Exile in Britain

In 1778, he fled to Britain with his daughter, never to return to the colonies, and became a leading spokesman of American Loyalists in London. In 1778 the General Assembly of Pennsylvania convicted him of high treason and confiscated his estates. Much of his property was the inheritance of his wife, Grace Growdon Galloway. They resided in Trevose Manor, now known as Growden Mansion, and owned much of the land which is now Bensalem, Pennsylvania In 1779 he appeared as a government witness in a parliamentary enquiry into the conduct of Lord Howe and General Howe during the Philadelphia Campaign of which he was deeply critical. When Galloway fled Philadelphia with the British his wife remained in the city with the hope of gaining her father's inheritance. She only left the family home when forcibly evicted by Charles Wilson Peale.

He was influential in convincing the British that a vast reservoir of Loyalist support could be tapped by aggressive leadership, thus setting up the British invasion of the South. After the war Galloway spent his remaining years in religious studies and writing in England.

He died in Watford, Hertfordshire, England on 10 August 1803.

Galloway Township, New Jersey, may have been named for him, although there is another possible source of the name.