The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918

And for a further prevention of that "abominable mixture, and the spurious issue, which may hereafter increase in this his majesty's colony and dominion as well by English, and other white men and women, intermarrying with Negroes or mulattoes, as by their unlawful coition with them" it was enacted that whatsoever English, or other white man or woman, being free, should intermarry with a Negro, or mulatto man or woman bond or free, should by judgment of the county court, be committed to prison and there remain during the space of six months, without bail or main-prize, and should forfeit and pay ten pounds current money of Virginia, to the use of the parish as aforesaid. It was further enacted that no minister of the Church of England, or other minister or person whatsoever, within that colony and dominion, should thereafter presume to marry a white man with a Negro, or mulatto woman, or to marry a white woman with a Negro or mulatto man, upon pain of forfeiting and paying for every such marriage, the sum of ten thousand pounds of tobacco.[455 - Hening, Statutes at Large, VI, pp. 360-362.]

It developed later that these laws did not meet all requirements, for there were in subsequent years so many illegitimate children born of such mothers that they became a public charge.[456 - Meade, Old Churches and Families of Virginia, I, p. 366.] Those of Negro blood were bound out by law. According to Russell, "In 1727 it was ordered that David James a free negro boy, be bound to Mr. James Isdel 'who is to teach him to read ye bible distinctly also ye trade of a gunsmith that he carry him to ye Clark's office & take Indenture to that purpose.' "By the Warwick County court it was 'ordered that Malacai, a mulatto boy, son of mulatto Betty be, by the Church Wardens of this Parish bound to Thomas Hobday to learn the art of a planter according to law.' By order of the Norfolk County court, about 1770, a free negro was bound out 'to learn the trade of a tanner.'"[457 - Russell, Free Negro in Virginia, pp. 138-139.]

In making more stringent regulations for servants and slaves, North Carolina provided in 1715 that if a white servant woman had a child by a Negro, mulatto or Indian, she must serve her master two years extra and should pay to the Church wardens immediately on the expiration of that time six pounds for the use of the parish or be sold four years for the use aforesaid.[458 - Bassett, Slavery and Servitude in North Carolina, p. 83.] A clergyman found guilty of officiating at such a marriage should be fined fifty pounds. This law, according to Bassett, did not succeed in preventing such unions. Two ministers were indicted within two years for performing such a marriage ceremony. "In one case the suit was dropped, in the other case the clergyman went before the Chief Justice and confessed as it seems of his own accord.... In 1727 a white woman was indicted in the General Court because she had left her husband and was cohabiting with a negro slave.... So far as general looseness was concerned this law of 1715 had no force. Brickell, who was a physician, says that white men of the colony suffered a great deal from a malignant kind of venereal disease which they took from the slaves."[459 - Ibid., pp. 58-59. See also Natural History of North Carolina, p. 48; and Hawk's History of North Carolina, II, pp. 126-127.]

By the law of 1741 therefore the colony endeavored to prevent what the General Assembly called "that abominable mixture and spurious issue, which hereafter may increase in this government, by white men and women intermarrying with Indians, Negroes, mustees, or mulattoes." It was enacted that if any man or woman, being free, should intermarry with an Indian, Negro, mustee or mulatto man or woman, or any person of mixed blood, to the third generation, bond or free, he should, by judgment of the county court forfeit and pay the sum of fifty pounds, proclamation money, to the use of the parish.[460 - Potter, Revised Laws of North Carolina, I, p. 130.] It was also provided that if any white servant woman should during the time of her servitude, be delivered of a child, begotten by any Negro, mulatto or Indian, such servant, over and above the time she was by this act to serve her master or owner for such offence, should be sold by the Church wardens of the parish, for two years, after the time by indenture or otherwise had expired.[461 - Ibid., I, p. 157.]

The miscegenation of the whites and blacks extended so widely that it became a matter of concern to the colonies farther north where the Negro population was not considerable. Seeking also to prevent this "spurious mixt issue" Massachusetts enacted in 1705 that a Negro or mulatto man committing fornication with an "English woman, or a woman of any other Christian nation," should be sold out of the province." "An English man, or man of any other Christian nation committing fornication with a Negro or mulatto woman," should be whipped, and the woman sold out of the province. None of her Majesty's English or Scottish subjects, nor of any other Christian nation within that province should contract matrimony with any Negro or mulatto, under a penalty imposed on the person joining them in marriage. No master should unreasonably deny marriage to his Negro with one of the same nation; any law, usage or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.[462 - Massachusetts Charters, etc., p. 747; Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, VI, p. 262.]

There was much social contact between the white servants and the Negroes in Pennsylvania, where the number of the latter greatly increased during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Turner says a white servant was indicted for this offence in Sussex County in 1677 and a tract of land there bore the name of "Mulatto Hall."[463 - Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, pp. 29-30.] According to the same writer Chester County seemed to have a large number of these cases and laid down the principle that such admixture should be prohibited,

"For that hee," referring to a white man, "Contrary to his Masters Consent hath … got wth child a certaine molato wooman Called Swart anna." "David Lewis Constable of Haverford Returned a Negro man of his And a white woman for having a Bastard Childe … the Negroe said she Intised him and promised him to marry him: she being examined, Confest the same: the Court ordered that she shall receive Twenty one lashes on her bare Backe … and the Court ordered the negroe never more to meddle with any white woman more uppon paine of his life."[464 - Ibid., p. 30.]

Advertising for Richard Molson in Philadelphia in 1720, his master said, "He is in company with a white woman named Mary, who is supposed now goes for his wife"; "and a white man named Garrett Choise, and Jane his wife, which said white people are servants to some neighbors of the said Richard Tilghman."[465 - The American Weekly Mercury (Philadelphia), August 20, 1720.] In 1722 a woman was punished for abetting a clandestine marriage between a white woman and a Negro. In the Pennsylvania Gazette, June 1, 1749, appeared the notice of the departure of Isaac Cromwell, a mulatto, who ran away with an English servant woman named Anne Greene.[466 - The Pennsylvania Gazette, June 1, 1749.]

The Assembly, therefore, upon a petition from inhabitants inveighing against this custom enacted a prohibitory law in 1725. This law provided that no minister, pastor or magistrate or other person whatsover who according to the laws of that province usually joined people in marriage should upon any pretence whatever join in marriage any Negro with any white person on the penalty of one hundred pounds. And it was further enacted that if any white man or woman should cohabit or dwell with any Negro under pretense of being married, such white man or woman should be put out of service as above directed until they come to the age of thirty-one years; and if any free Negro man or woman should intermarry with a white man or woman, such Negro should become a slave during life to be sold by order of the justice of the quarter sessions of the respective county; and if any free Negro man or woman should commit fornication or adultery with any white man or woman, such Negro or Negroes should be sold as a servant for seven years and the white man or woman should be punished as the law directs in cases of adultery or fornication.[467 - Statutes at Large, IV, p. 62.]

This law seemed to have very little effect on the miscegenation of the races in certain parts. In Chester County, according to the records of 1780, mulattoes constituted one fifth of the Negro population.[468 - Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, p. 31.] Furthermore, that very year when the State of Pennsylvania had grown sufficiently liberal to provide for gradual emancipation the law against the mingling of the races was repealed. Mixed marriages thereafter became common as the white and the blacks in the light of the American Revolution realized liberty in its full meaning. Thomas Branagan said:

"There are many, very many blacks who … begin to feel themselves consequential, … will not be satisfied unless they get white women for wives, and are likewise exceedingly impertinent to white people in low circumstances.... I solemnly swear, I have seen more white women married to, and deluded through the arts of seduction by negroes in one year in Philadelphia, than for eight years I was visiting (West Indies and the Southern States). I know a black man who seduced a young white girl … who soon after married him, and died with a broken heart. On her death he said that he would not disgrace himself to have a negro wife and acted accordingly, for he soon after married a white woman. … There are perhaps hundreds of white women thus fascinated by black men in this city, and there are thousands of black children by them at present."[469 - Branagan, Serious Remonstrances, pp. 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 102; Somerset Whig, March 12, 1818, and Union Times, August 15, 1834.]

A reaction thereafter set in against this custom during the first decade of the nineteenth century, when fugitives in the rough were rushing to that State, and culminated in an actual campaign against it by 1820. That year a petition from Greene County said that many Negroes had settled in Pennsylvania and had been able to seduce into marriage "the minor children of the white inhabitants."[470 - Journal of Senate, 1820-1821, p. 213; and American Daily Advertiser, January 23, 1821.] This county, therefore, asked that these marriages be made an offence against the laws of the State. Such a marriage was the cause of a riot in Columbia in 1834 and in 1838 the members of the Constitutional Convention engaged in a heated discussion of the custom.[471 - Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1838, X, p. 230.] Petitions were frequently sent to the legislature asking that this admixture be penalized by law, but no such action was ever taken. Relying upon public opinion, however, the advocates of racial integrity practically succeeded. Marriages of whites and blacks eventually became so odious that they led to disturbances as in the case of the riot of 1849, one of the causes of which was that a white man was living with a Negro wife.[472 - The Spirit of the Times, October 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 19, 1849.] This was almost ineffective, however, in the prevention of race admixture. Clandestine intermingling went on and tended to increase in enormous proportions. The conclusive proof of this is that in 1860 mulattoes constituted one third of the Negro population of Pennsylvania.

Persons who professed seriously to consider the future of slavery, therefore, saw that miscegenation and especially the general connection of white men with their female slaves introduced a mulatto race whose numbers would become dangerous, if the affections of their white parents were permitted to render them free.[473 - Harriet Martineau, Views of Slavery and Emancipation, p. 10.] The Americans of the future would thereby become a race of mixed breeds rather than a white and a black population. As the lust of white persons for those of color was too strong to prevent this miscegenation, the liberty of emancipating their mulatto offspring was restricted in the slave States but that of selling them remained.[474 - Hart, Slavery and Abolition, p. 182; Censuses of the United States.]

These laws eventually, therefore, had their desired effect. They were never intended to prevent the miscegenation of the races but to debase to a still lower status the offspring of the blacks who in spite of public opinion might intermarry with the poor white women and to leave women of color without protection against white men, who might use them for convenience, whereas white women and black men would gradually grow separate and distinct in their social relations. Although thereafter the offspring of blacks and whites did not diminish, instead of being gradually assimilated to the type of the Caucasian they tended to constitute a peculiar class commonly called people of color having a higher social status than that of the blacks but finally classified with all other persons of African blood as Negroes.

While it later became a capital offence in some of the slave States for a Negro man to cohabit with a white woman, Abdy who toured this country from 1833 to 1834 doubted that such laws were enforced. "A man," said he, "was hanged not long ago for this crime at New Orleans. The partner of his guilt—his master's daughter—endeavored to save his life, by avowing that she alone was to blame. She died shortly after his execution."[475 - Abdy, North America, I, p. 160.] With the white man and the Negro woman the situation was different. A sister of President Madison once said to the Reverend George Bourne, then a Presbyterian minister in Virginia: "We Southern ladies are complimented with the name of wives; but we are only the mistresses of seraglios." The masters of the female slaves, however, were not always the only persons of loose morals. Many women of color were also prostituted to the purposes of young white men[476 - Child, Anti-slavery Catechism, p. 17; 2 Howard Mississippi Reports, p. 837.] and overseers.[477 - Kemble, Georgian Plantation, pp. 140, 162, 199, 208-210; Olmstead, Seaboard States, pp. 599-600; Rhodes, United States, I, pp. 341-343.] Goodell reports a well-authenticated account of a respectable Christian lady at the South who kept a handsome mulatto female for the use of her genteel son, as a method of deterring him, as she said, "from indiscriminate and vulgar indulgences."[478 - Goodell, Slave Code, pp. 111-112.] Harriet Martineau discovered a young white man who on visiting a southern lady became insanely enamored of her intelligent quadroon maid. He sought to purchase her but the owner refused to sell the slave because of her unusual worth. The young white man persisted in trying to effect this purchase and finally informed her owner that he could not live without this attractive slave. Thereupon the white lady sold the woman of color to satisfy the lust of her friend.[479 - Harriet Martineau, Views of Slavery and Emancipation, p. 13.]

The accomplishment of this task of reducing the free people of color to the status of the blacks, however, was not easy. In the first place, so many persons of color had risen to positions of usefulness among progressive people and had formed connections with them that an abrupt separation was both inexpedient and undesirable. Exceptions to the hard and fast rules of caste were often made to relieve the people of color. Moreover, the miscegenation of the races in the South and especially in large cities like Charleston and New Orleans had gone to the extent that from these centers eventually went, as they do now, a large number of quadroons and octoroons,[480 - Featherstonaugh, Excursion, p. 141; Buckingham, Slave States, I, p. 358.] who elsewhere crossed over to the other race.

White men ashamed of the planters who abused helpless black women are now trying to minimize the prevalence of this custom. Such an effort, however, means little in the face of the facts that one seventh of the Negroes in the United States had in their veins any amount of Caucasian blood in 1860 and according to the last census more than one fifth of them have this infusion. Furthermore the testimony of travelers in this country during the slavery period support the contention that race admixture was common.[481 - Writing of conditions in this country prior to the American Revolution, Anne Grant found only two cases of miscegenation in Albany before this period but saw it well established later by the British soldiers. Johann Schoepf—witnessed this situation in Charleston in 1784. J. P. Brissot saw this tendency toward miscegenation as a striking feature of society among the French in the Ohio Valley in 1788. The Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach was very much impressed with the numerous quadroons and octoroons of New Orleans in 1825 and Charles Gayarré portrayed the same conditions there in 1830. Frederika Bremer frequently met with this class while touring the South in 1850. See Grant, Memoirs of An American Lady, p. 28; Schoepf, Travels in the Confederation, II, p. 382; Brissot, Travels, II, p. 61; Saxe-Weimar, Travels, II, p. 69; Grace King, New Orleans, pp. 346-349; Frederika Bremer, Homes of the New World, I, pp. 325, 326, 382, 385.]

So extensive did it become that the most prominent white men in the country did not escape. Benjamin Franklin seems to have made no secret of his associations with Negro women.[482 - Ibid., XXII, p. 98.] Russell connects many of these cases with the master class in Virginia.[483 - See Russell, Free Negro in Virginia, p. 127.] There are now in Washington Negroes who call themselves the descendants of two Virginians who attained the presidency of the United States.

The abolitionists made positive statements about the mulatto offspring of Thomas Jefferson. Goodell lamented the fact that Jefferson in his will had to entreat the legislature of Virginia to confirm his bequest of freedom to his own reputed enslaved offspring that they might remain in the State of their nativity, where their families and connections were.[484 - Goodell, Slave Code, p. 376.] Writing in 1845, the editor of the Cleveland American expressed regret that notwithstanding all the services and sacrifices of Jefferson in the establishment of the freedom of this country, his own son then living in Ohio was not allowed to vote or bear witness in a court of justice. The editor of the Ohio Star said: "We are not sure whether this is intended as a statement of actual fact, or of what might possibly and naturally enough be true." The Cincinnati Herald inquired: "Is this a fact? If so, it ought to be known. Perhaps 'the Democracy' might be induced to pass a special act in his favor." The Cleveland American, therefore, added: "We are credibly informed that a natural son of Jefferson by the celebrated 'Black Sal,' a person of no little renown in the politics of 1800 and thereafter, is now living in a central county of Ohio. We shall endeavor to get at the truth of the matter and make public the result of our inquiries."[485 - The Liberator, December 19, 1845.]

A later report of miscegenation of this kind was recorded by Jane Grey Swisshelm in her Half a Century, where she states that a daughter of President John Tyler "ran away with the man she loved in order that she might be married, but for this they must reach foreign soil. A young lady of the White House could not marry the man of her choice in the United States. The lovers were captured and she was brought to His Excellency, her father, who sold her to a slave-trader. From that Washington slave-pen she was taken to New Orleans by a man who expected to get twenty-five hundred dollars for her on account of her great beauty.[486 - Swisshelm, Half a Century, p. 129.]

    Carter G. Woodson

GERRIT SMITH'S EFFORT IN BEHALF OF THE NEGROES IN NEW YORK

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the condition of the free Negroes in the Southern States became more and more critical. The doctrine of the rights of man, which had swept over the world in the latter part of the eighteenth century had had its effect on the colonists and resulted in the manumission of many slaves. These freedmen taking advantage of their economic and educational opportunities became an ever increasing menace to the social institutions that had no foundation except that of slavery. Ambitious, often aggressive, they were a constant source of dissatisfaction because of the unhappy comparison of their lot with that of the slaves. They, moreover, encouraged the slaves to improve their condition and to escape to the North. This situation was rendered still more critical for the reason that the South, considering slavery indispensable to its economic life, was already being lashed into a frenzy to gain new slave territory and to strengthen the institution by every possible method of oppression of the blacks. Measures inimical to the economic progress of freedmen were enacted.[487 - See the session laws of the State Legislatures, and Woodson's Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, pp. 151-178.] Many who had been manumitted were seized and again reduced to slavery. Educational opportunities were restricted or denied. Legally they were without voice and hence could secure no redress when wronged.[488 - Goodell, Slave Code, and Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage, II, pp. 1-218.]

This economic poverty, insecurity of personal liberty, and absolutely negative political status, impelled the freedmen to find better conditions in the North. The reaction against plantation life and the glittering attractions of the large city with the prospect of earning money less arduously no doubt account for their influx into the industrial centers.[489 - Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration, Chapter II.] These free blacks migrated in great numbers especially to New York and Philadelphia. The Colonization Society attempted to solve the problem by effecting the colonization of the free Negroes somewhere either within or without the United States. Many friends of the Negroes and even some of the Negroes themselves thought favorably of the idea and a few small colonies were formed in the Western States and in Liberia.[490 - The Journal of Negro History, I, p. 276; II, p. 209.]

Among the anti-slavery men who at first saw no fault in the aims of the Colonization Society was Gerrit Smith. The son of a slave owner in the State of New York, he was acquainted with slavery in the milder form in which it existed in the North. It was just two years before his birth that the legislature of New York passed its act of emancipation providing that all children after the year 1799 should be free, the males on reaching the age of twenty-eight years and the female twenty-five. His father, Peter Smith, was a slaveholder and the owner of extensive lands in the counties of northern New York; and even before his death the management of these vast properties devolved upon his son.

He soon became deeply interested in the uplift of the slaves and endeavored to improve their condition by gradual emancipation looking forward to colonization. As early as 1834, his diary shows a growing belief in the universal right to liberty. Years ripened this belief and also developed his anti-land-monopolist principles, both of which reached fruition in his act of 1846, by which he gave away thousands of acres of land. He severed his connection with the Colonization Society when that body overtly declared that it was not a society for the abolition of slavery nor for the improvement of the blacks nor for the suppression of the slave trade, and he threw his energy into the work of abolition as fervently, if not as drastically, as Garrison.[491 - Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, pp. 94-143.]

Anti-land-monopolist as he was, Gerrit Smith believed that the life of the small free farmer was calculated to develop thrift and self respect in the character of the colored freedmen that he saw crowded in sections of the large cities. For although enjoying greater security of personal liberty, the mass of colored people in New York State had not made much economic progress, even to the extent of possessing property valued at two hundred and fifty dollars, which in that State would have entitled them to the right to vote.[492 - Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, II, p. 56.] He said that he had for years indulged the thought that when he had sold enough land to pay his debts, he would give away the remainder to the poor. He was an Agrarian, who wanted every man desirous to own a farm to have one. He, therefore, felt that it was safe to make a beginning in the work of distributing land to individuals. He had theretofore given tracts of land to public institutions and a few small parcels to individuals, but had not entered upon the larger task of making large donations of land to the poor.

He then planned to transfer three thousand parcels of land of forty to sixty acres each during the following three years. To whom among the poor he should make these deeds, was a question he could not hastily solve. He was sure, however, that, inasmuch as his home and the land were both in the State of New York, it would be very suitable to select his beneficiaries from among the people of that State. But for a long time, he was at a loss to decide, whether to take his beneficiaries generally from the meritorious poor or only from the deserving Negroes. He said, "I could not put a bounty on color. I shrank from the least appearance of doing so, and if I know my heart, it was equally compassionate toward such white and black men as are equal sufferers."[493 - Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, p. 103.] In the end, however, he concluded to confine his gifts to Negroes.

He would not have come to this conclusion he said, if the land he had to give away had been several times as much as it was, nor if the Negroes, the poorest of the poor, had not been the most deeply wronged class of the citizens. "That they are so," said he, "is evident, if only from the fact, that the cruel, killing, Heaven-defying prejudice of which they are victims, has closed against them the avenues to riches and respectability—to happiness and usefulness. That they are so, is also evident from the fact, that, whilst white men in this State, however destitute of property, are allowed to vote for Civil Rulers, every colored man in it who does not own landed estate to the value of two-hundred and fifty dollars, is excluded from the exercise of this natural and indispensably protective right."[494 - Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 104.] He confessed that he was influenced by the consideration that there was great encouragement to improve the condition of the Negroes, because every amelioration in it contributed to loosen the bands of the enslaved portion of their outraged and afflicted race.

He, therefore, requested Reverend Theodore S. Wright, Reverend Charles B. Ray, and Dr. J. McCune Smith, three representative Negroes of New York City, to make out a list of the Negroes who should receive from him parcels of land. His only restrictions upon them in making this selection were that they should choose no person younger than twenty-one and no person older than sixty; that they accept no person who was in easy circumstances as to property; and no one who was already the owner of land, and no drunkards.[495 - Letter of Gerrit Smith to Theodore S. Wright, Charles B. Ray, and J. McCune Smith.] He further promised to pay all taxes as well as purchase money and interest due to the State of New York hoping that none of the parcels would be sold for the nonpayment of taxes.[496 - Ibid.] The total number of colonists were to be one thousand nine hundred and eighty-five, to be distributed as follows: in the county of Suffolk, 127; Queens, 215; Kings, 197; New York, 861; Richmond, 832; Rockland, 331; Westchester, 115; Dutchess, 150; Sullivan, 5; Ulster, 106; Orange, 136; and Putnam, 10. Although this distribution was suggested the actual grants seem to have been made in the counties of Franklin, Essex, Hamilton, Fulton, Oneida, Delaware, Madison and Ulster.

On September 9, 1846, he wrote again to three gentlemen of color, saying that a thousand of the deeds were already in the hands of the committee for distribution. He had saved them the expense of securing the certificate of the County Clerk by having the acknowledgment of the execution taken by a Supreme Court judge. The only expense left for the beneficiaries to bear was the recording of the deed. The letter closed with a request that the three gentlemen prepare and send out a circular among the persons receiving the deeds, making known to them the conditions and reasons which actuated him in bestowing the land. This was done and the recipients were exhorted to profit by the chance to become land owners and thereby secure their right to vote.

These lands, as Smith realized and admitted, were not all arable but many of them had considerable timber. Such property today would be considered valuable, but in those days of plentitude it passed as undesirable. Some of his enemies accused him of making for himself a reputation for generosity by giving away useless land. There is no evidence, however, that such accusations were made by the Negroes.[497 - Special Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education on the Schools of the District of Columbia, 1871, p. 367; The African Repository, X. p. 312.] But be that as it may, the experiment was a failure. It was not successful because of the intractability of the land, the harshness of the climate, and in a great measure, the inefficiency of the settlers. They had none of the qualities of farmers. Furthermore, having been disabled by infirmities and vices they could not as beneficiaries answer the call of the benefactor. Peterboro, the town opened to Negroes in this section did maintain a school and served as a station of the underground railroad but the agricultural results expected of the enterprise never materialized.[498 - Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, p. 73.] The main trouble in this case was the impossibility of substituting something foreign for individual enterprise.

The failure of the enterprise did not cause this philanthropist to cease his activities in behalf of freedom and justice to the Negroes. He continued a staunch abolitionist, demanding unconditional emancipation of the slaves and leaving undone nothing which might effect this change. He was once intimately associated with John Brown, who at one time left his home and purchased from Smith a farm in the Negro colony in order to live with the blacks and help them to improve their economic condition. Smith lived until 1874, long enough to see the Negroes freed and many of them making elsewhere that economic progress which was the dream of his earlier years.

    Zita Dyson

THE BUXTON SETTLEMENT IN CANADA

The Buxton, or Elgin Association Settlement, in Kent county, western Ontario, was in many respects the most important attempt made before the Civil War to found a Negro refugee colony in Canada. In population, material wealth and general organization it was outstanding, and the firm foundation upon which it was established is shown by the fact that today, more than half a century after emancipation, it is still a prosperous and distinctly Negro settlement.

The western peninsula of Ontario, lying between Lakes Huron and Erie, was long the Mecca of the fugitive slave. Bounded on the east by the State of New York, on the west by Michigan, and on the south by Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania, this was the part of Canada most easily reached by the fugitive; and Niagara, Cleveland, Detroit and other lake ports saw thousands of refugees cross narrow strips of water to "shake the lion's paw" and find freedom in the British queen's dominions. During the forties and fifties there was a constant stream of refugees into Canada. As many as thirty in a day would cross the Detroit River at Fort Malden alone. Many of these went to the cities and towns, but others found greater happiness in the separate Negro communities which grew up here and there.

The history of the Buxton settlement, one of these, is closely linked with the name of Rev. William King. King was a native of Londonderry, Ireland, a graduate of Glasgow College, who had emigrated to the United States and become rector of a college in Louisiana. Later he returned to Scotland, studied theology in the Free Church College, Edinburgh, and in 1846 was sent out to Canada as a missionary of the Free Church of Scotland. While he was living in Louisiana he became, through marriage, the owner of fifteen slaves of an estimated value of $9,000. For a time he placed them on a neighboring plantation and gave them the proceeds of their labor but that did not satisfy his conscience and in 1848 he brought them to Canada, thereby automatically giving them their freedom. His effort on their behalf did not end here. Having brought them to this new country, he felt it a duty to look after them, to educate and make of them useful citizens. The same thing, he believed, could be done for others in like circumstance.

The first effort to secure a tract of land for the refugees was made by the Rev. Mr. King as the representative of the Presbyterian Church. This application was before the Executive Council of the Canadian Government in September, 1848, but was not successful. Steps were at once taken to organize a non-sectarian body to deal with the government and this new body took the name of the Elgin Association in honor of the then governor-general of the Canadas who seems to have been well disposed toward the refugees. The Elgin Association was legally incorporated "for the settlement and moral improvement of the colored population of Canada, for the purpose of purchasing crown or clergy reserve lands in the township of Raleigh and settling the same with colored families resident in Canada of approved moral character."[499 - Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, 1856, p. 292.] Rev. Dr. Connor was the first president; Rev. Dr. Willis, of Knox College, Toronto, first vice-president, and Rev. William King, second vice-president. J. T. Matthews was the secretary, J. S. Howard, treasurer, while the original directors were E. A. T. McCord, Walter McFarland, Peter Freland, Charles Bercsy, W. R. Abbott, John Laidlaw, E. F. Whittesend and James Brown. These are the names that appear upon the petition to the government for lands, the original of which is in the Dominion Archives.

There were difficulties in securing the land. Decided opposition to the whole project made itself manifest in Kent county.[500 - Documents in Canadian Archives Department.] In Chatham, the county town, a meeting of protest was held. The plans of the Elgin Association were condemned and a resolution was passed setting forth objections to selling any of the public domain "to foreigners, the more so when such persons belong to a different branch of the human family and are black." A vigilance committee was appointed to watch the operations of the Elgin Association while the various township councils interested were requested to advance the necessary funds for carrying on the campaign. That there was some dissent, however, even in Chatham is shown by the fact that one Henry Gouins was allowed to speak in favor of the Association. The vigilance committee soon issued a small pamphlet, made up chiefly of the speeches and resolutions of the public meeting. The name of Edwin Larwill, member of Parliament for the county of Kent, appears as one of those most active in opposition to the settlement plan. Larwill had a record for hostility to the colored people though at election times he was accustomed to parade as their friend. In 1856 he introduced in the House of Assembly a most insulting resolution[501 - Toronto Weekly Globe, January 1, 1858.] calling for a report from the government on "all negro or colored, male or female quadroon, mulatto, samboes, half breeds or mules, mongrels or conglomerates" in public institutions. Larwill was at once called to account for his action and a resolution was introduced calling upon him to retract.

The opposition of Larwill and his supporters failed to impede the progress of the Association and a tract of about 9000 acres, lying to the south of Chatham and within a mile or two of Lake Erie, was purchased. This was surveyed and divided into small farms of fifty acres each, roads were cut through the dense forest and the first settlers began the arduous work of clearing. The colonists were allowed to take up fifty acres each at a price of $2.50 per acre, payable in ten annual instalments.[502 - Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, 1856, pp. 292-293.] Each settler was bound within a certain period to build a house at least as good as the model house set up by the Association, to provide himself with necessary implements and to proceed with the work of clearing land. The model house after which nearly all the dwellings were copied was 18 by 24 feet, 12 feet in height and with a stoop running the length of the front. Some of the settlers were ambitious enough to build larger and better houses but there were none inferior to the model. The tract of country upon which the settlers were located was an almost unbroken forest. The ground was level, heavily timbered with oak, hickory, beech, elm, etc. Part of the soil was a deep rich black loam. Trees two to four feet in diameter were common and the roads cut through to open up settlement were hardly more than wide lanes. Rev. Mr. King thought that one reason for the colony's success was the fact that so many of the settlers were good axe men. Their industry was remarkable and some of the more industrious paid for their land in five or six years and took up more to clear.[503 - The slaves who had been freed by Mr. King formed the nucleus of the colony but others came as soon as the land was thrown open. The advances made by this colony during the first years of its existence were remarkable. The third annual report for the year 1852, showed a population of 75 families or 400 inhabitants, with 350 acres of land cleared and 204 acres under cultivation. A year later, the fourth annual report showed 130 families or 520 persons, with 500 acres of land cleared and 135 partially cleared, 415 acres being under cultivation in 1853. The live stock was given as 128 cattle, 15 horses, 30 sheep and 250 hogs. The day school had 112 children enrolled and the Sabbath School 80.The fifth report, for the year 1854, showed 150 families in the colony or immediately adjoining it, 726 acres of land cleared, 174 acres partially cleared and 577 acres under cultivation. In the year there had been an increase of cleared land amounting to 226 acres and of land under cultivation of 162 acres. The livestock consisted of 150 cattle and oxen, 38 horses, 25 sheep and 700 hogs. The day school had 147 on the roll and the Sabbath School 120. A second day school was opened that year.The sixth annual report (1855) shows 827 acres of land cleared and fenced and 216 acres chopped and to go under cultivation in 1856. There were 810 acres cultivated that year while the live stock consisted of 190 cattle and oxen, 40 horses, 38 sheep and 600 hogs. The day school had an enrollment of 150. Among the advances of this year was the erection of a saw and grist mill which supplied the colony with lumber and with flour and feed. The building of the saw mill meant added prosperity, for an estimate made in 1854 placed the value of the standing timber at $127,000.A representative of the New York Tribune visited the colony in 1857 and his description of what he saw was reprinted in the Toronto Globe of November 20, 1857. The colony was then seven years old and had a population of about 200 families or 800 souls. More than 1,000 acres had been completely cleared while on 200 acres more the trees had been felled and the land would be put under cultivation the next spring. The acreage under cultivation in the season of 1857 he gives as follows: corn, 354 acres; wheat, 200 acres; oats, 70 acres; potatoes, 80 acres; other crops, 120 acres. The live stock consisted of 200 cows, 80 oxen, 300 hogs, 52 horses and a small number of sheep. The industries included a steam sawmill, a brickyard, pearl ash factory, blacksmith, carpenter and shoe shops as well as a good general store. There were two schools, one male and one female. The latter, which had been open only about a year, taught plain sewing and other domestic subjects. The two schools had a combined enrollment of 140 with average attendance of 58. It was being proposed to require a small payment in order to make the schools self-supporting. The Sabbath school had an enrollment of 112 and an average attendance of 52.—Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, pp. 293-297.]

There are several contemporary references to the sobriety and morality of the colonists. The New York Tribune correspondent in 1857 was able to report that liquor was neither made nor sold in the colony and that drunkenness was unknown. There was no illegitimacy and there had been but one arrest for violation of the Canadian laws in the seven years of the colony's history. Though the Presbyterian church gave special attention to the Buxton colony this did not hinder the growth of other sects, Methodists and Baptists both being numerous, though the best of feeling seems to have prevailed and many who retained their own connection were fairly regular attendants at Mr. King's services.

The Tribune article gives an interesting description of the homes. The cabins, though rough and rude, were covered with vines and creepers with bright flowers and vegetable gardens round about. Despite the pioneer conditions there abounded comfort and plenty of plain homemade furniture. Pork, potatoes and green corn were staple items of the menu. Of King's former slaves the Tribune reports that three had died, nine were at Buxton, one was married and living in Chatham and two others in Detroit were about to return. The Tribune reports on one case as typical of what was being achieved by the colony. A colored man, fourteen years before a slave in Missouri and who had been at Buxton six years, reported that he had 24 acres out of his plot cleared, fenced and under cultivation. On six acres more the trees were felled. He had paid four installments on his farm, owned a yoke of oxen, a wagon and a mare and two colts. His fourteen-year-old boy was at school and was reading Virgil. In the home, besides bed and bedding, chairs and tables, there was a rocking chair and a large, new safe. Water was brought to the visitor in a clean tumbler, set upon a plate. A neighboring cabin had carpet on the floor and some crude prints on the walls. All the cabins had large brick fireplaces. Rev. Mr. King's own house, built of logs with high steep roof, dormer windows and a porch the whole length, was somewhat larger than the others.[504 - The New York Tribune.]

What these people actually accomplished at Buxton amid conditions so different from what they had known in the past is altogether remarkable. Some had known little of farm work before coming to the colony while all of them must have found the Canadian climate something of a hardship even in the summer. Outside of the farm work they showed ability as mechanics and tradesmen. One who visited them in the fifties says:[505 - Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro, 1855, p. 214.]

"The best country tavern in Kent is kept by Mr. West, at Buxton. Mr. T. Stringer is one of the most enterprising tradesmen in the county, and he is a Buxtonian, a colored man. I broke my carriage near there. The woodwork, as well as the iron, was broken. I never had better repairing done to either the woodwork or the ironwork of my carriage, I never had better shoeing than was done to my horses, in Buxton, in Feb., 1852, by a black man, a native of Kentucky—in a word, the work was done after the pattern of Charles Peyton Lucas. They are blessed with able mechanics, good farmers, enterprising men, and women worthy of them and they are training the rising generation to principles such as will give them the best places in the esteem and the service of their countrymen at some day not far distant."

A few years sufficed to remove most of the prejudice that had shown itself in the opposition of the Larwill faction at Chatham at the inception of the colony. When Rev. S. R. Ward visited the colony in the early fifties he found that instead of lowering land values of adjoining property as some had predicted would result from establishing a Negro colony in Kent county, the Buxton settlement had actually raised the value of adjoining farms. The Buxton settlers were spoken of by the white people as good farmers, good customers and good neighbors. There were white children attending the Buxton school and white people in their Sunday church services.

Perhaps no finer testimony to the success of the whole undertaking is recorded than that of Dr. Samuel R. Howe who came to Canada for the Freedmen's Inquiry Committee.

"Buxton is certainly a very interesting place," he wrote. "Sixteen years ago it was a wilderness. Now, good highways are laid out in all directions through the forest, and by their side, standing back 33 feet from the road, are about 200 cottages, all built in the same pattern, all looking neat and comfortable; around each one is a cleared place of several acres which is well cultivated. The fences are in good order, the barns seem well filled, and cattle and horses, and pigs and poultry, abound. There are signs of industry and thrift and comfort everywhere; signs of intemperance, of idleness, of want nowhere. There is no tavern and no groggery; but there is a chapel and a schoolhouse. Most interesting of all are the inhabitants. Twenty years ago most of them were slaves, who owned nothing, not even their children. Now they own themselves; they own their houses and farms; and they have their wives and children about them. They are enfranchised citizens of a government which protects their rights.... The present condition of all these colonists as compared with their former one is remarkable.... This settlement is a perfect success. Here are men who were bred in slavery, who came here and purchased land at the government price, cleared it, bought their own implements, built their own houses after a model and have supported themselves in all material circumstances and now support their schools in part.... I consider that this settlement has done as well as a white settlement would have done under the same circumstances."[506 - Howe, Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, 1864, pp. 70-71.]

The Buxton settlement had its part in the John Brown affair. A letter written by John Brown, Jr., from Sandusky, Ohio, August 27, 1859, and addressed to "Friend Henrie," (Kagi), speaks of men in Hamilton, Chatham, Buxton, etc., suitable for the enterprise.

"At Dr. W's house (presumably in Hamilton) we formed an association," he says, "the officers consisting of chairman, treasurer and corresponding secretary, the business of which is to hunt up good workmen and raise the means among themselves to send them forward.... No minutes of the organization nor any of its proceedings are or will be preserved in writing. I formed similar associations in Chat—and also at B-x-t-n."