This is part 1 of our annual Black History Month blog series.

It’s an exciting story that helps us feel connected to the great and sweeping narrative of the Underground Railroad: that (seemingly, any and all) tunnels, cellars, attics, barns, etc. of a certain age throughout the city were purpose-built for hiding Freedom Seekers after their arrival on the Underground Railroad.

It’s a common misconception that is often repeated through family lore. I hear it often shared as a family’s connection to an important narrative in our city.

As exciting as those stories are, there is no historical evidence to support the widespread hiding of Freedom Seekers in the basements, cellars, attics, etc. of St. Catharines.

In this four-part series, I’ll examine the many historical layers that perpetuate this myth. I’ll also examine the low number of ultimately unsuccessful legal and illegal attempts at removing Freedom Seekers from Canada and returning them to enslavement through 1830s-1860s. This meant that Freedom Seekers were confident enough in their legal and socio-political protections that they lived openly.

Why? This local lore distracts from the meaningful lives and contributions led by Freedom Seekers in our community. It detracts from and even tries to excuse the racism and prejudice faced and endured by Freedom Seekers when they arrived in St. Catharines. And it does a disservice to the thousands of Freedom Seekers and the millions left behind in enslavement to misuse a varied and complex 30-year political and societal struggle for good storytelling.

Part 1: The Rumour Mill

Chloe Cooley

On March 14, 1793, Chloe Cooley famously and loudly resisted what hundreds had experienced before and would after her: sale and transport of an enslaved person across the Niagara River.

Peter Martin, a free Black loyalist, was witness to the completely legal tying-up of Cooley by her owner Adam Vrooman, and her completely legal transportation across the Niagara River for her completely legal sale to an enslaver in New York State.

Cooley’s now-famous resistance was adopted as a standard by which the 1793 Act to Limit Slavery was passed in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, the first piece of anti-slavery legislation passed in the British Empire. The Act to Limit Slavery gradually ended slavery in Upper Canada by granting freedom to those born to enslaved parents (but not freedom to all enslaved peoples, outright), freedom at age twenty-five, and outlawed the importation of enslaved peoples into Upper Canada (but not the sale of enslaved peoples out of the province).

Cooley’s resistance and the following legislation also set the stage that would make that very crossing one of both hope and fear for the next 60 years. It sowed fear of just how easy it was to whisk a person away across the Niagara River into the consciousness of every Freedom Seeker who crossed that line in the wrong direction.¹

That Imaginary Line

“When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.”²

When Harriet Tubman, along with hundreds of other refugee Freedom Seekers, arrived in the 1850s, they were already protected by a patchwork of legislation, of court and executive council decisions and of the Governor General himself. I’ll explore that patchwork of protections that secured the border in Part 2 of this series.

It had been several years since any formerly enslaved person was extradited to the United States, and it was uncommon, indeed rare, for former enslavers or paid bounty hunters to enter Canada and openly declare their intention, and rarer still for them to make contact with, then bribe, trick, or physically kidnap their intended target back into slavery across the border. Rarer most of all that a mob of local abolitionists and fellow refugees wouldn’t gather to put a stop to it.

Nevertheless, the deep-seated fear of being recaptured and taken back across the border persisted. Rumours confirming those fears were frequent. That fear and those rumours were woven into the historical fabric of the Underground Railroad both in the 19^th century and today.

But the historical evidence just doesn’t support the continuation of the hiding and secrecy that was core to Underground Railroad activity into Upper Canada. Certainly, the close calls and Hollywood-like aspects of the journey here were very real along the way in the United States. But once refugees arrived in Canada, it just wasn’t necessary.

If refugees were terrified of being captured and returned to enslavement, then why did they live so openly? Freedom Seekers, including Harriet Tubman, lived openly in St. Catharines. Many were unfazed to be identified by their full name and home state (such as Maryland or Virginia) in newspaper articles, books and publications, and even the census. Public speaking events and Sunday church services were openly attended by refugees. Others worked in the famous salt-spring hotels, like Stephenson House, popular with Victorian tourists, including slave owners like Confederate First Lady Varina Anne Davis (wife of Jefferson Davis), and refugees may have encountered their former masters. Some who had started their own businesses were listed in the City’s business directory! There was no easier way to find a person in the 1850s than by looking them up in the business directory.

Even free Blacks who had aided refugees, which was very much against the Fugitive Slave Act, had to come to Canada. But in the case of Rev. Jermain Loguen, he didn’t do so secretly or quietly, even with charges against him. His arrival was widely published in the St. Catharines Journal on January 22, 1852:

“…We have had in our town, for some months past, a colored minister, the Rev. Mr. Loguen, formerly of Syracuse, but who was obliged to fly from that place in consequence of the trouble arising from the arrest of some fugitives. Information [was] sworn against this gentleman as aiding and assisting the fugitives, and he was necessitated to fly.”³

I’ll explore more about the idea of living openly, and the potential for a run-in with a bounty hunter or former enslaver in Part 3 of our series, but you get the point: no one was really hiding in the basements of St. Catharines.

The Rumour Mill?

To further draw out the complexity of this story, let me contradict myself. Rumours regarding the capture of formerly enslaved persons in Upper Canada were abundant. Where the Fugitive Slave Act had allowed the bounty hunting and return of escaped enslaved persons back across state lines, and had driven many refugees into Canada, that risk was supposed to be settled at the border.

If Freedom Seekers, once in Canada, were safe, how did rumours persist? Concurrently with the legal freedom which afforded refugees time to settle (economically, socially, physically, and mentally) the slow transmission of information and misinformation was rampant. The slow transmission of information was often central to misinformation in this period as is well documented throughout the Civil War period. Therefore, it was easy to trick a refugee into returning to the United States, not because they didn’t know better, but because confirming someone’s story was so difficult, as the St. Catharines Journal reported on August 30, 1855: “Our town was the scene of some excitement on Thursday night last, and it was only by the interference of the constables that we were not disgraced by a wanton outrage on the persons of two unoffending women. It seems that the colored population were informed that two persons had arrived here for the purpose of enticing away an escaped slave, and they turned out, men and women to protect, as they supposed, a girl from being brought back to slavery. They surrounded the man’s house in which the parties were, broke some of his windows, and made an effort to lay hands on the unfortunate women, who after all were found to be only messengers from the former slave’s mother, who wanted her daughter to join her in California. The women had all necessary documents to show that they had come here on a message of kindness, but this would not have protected them from the mob, if it had not been for the proper authorities.

The coloured people may rest assured that none of their people will ever be taken from this place against their own consent, and therefor they should be exceedingly cautious how they allow themselves to be induced to outrage…If the women who came here to assist the ex-slave to join her mother in California had not been placed in the lock-up, and protected…they would in all probability have fallen victims to the unfounded excitements produced.”⁴

The Provincial Freeman, published by Mary Ann Shadd, also printed the following correspondence regarding these events, on September 15, 1855:

“The Coloured people of St. Catharines were thrown into a state of excitement on the 23rd of August by what appeared to be an attempt to persuade a fugitive young woman, named Elizabeth Green, to go to the States, and to fall again into the hands of her former owners. Two previous attempts having been made, and a female, who on the present occasion claimed to be an aunt, but whose relationship was denied by the girl, being solicitous to get her consent, by representing the perfect security she would have in California. An attempt to prevent her abduction, and bring out the facts, was made by some citizens, by charging the parties implicated with an attempt to kidnap. The woman and her travelling companion were put in the lock up and finally spirited away secretly.

…It is notorious that colored citizens of St. Catharines cannot hope for protection nor justice in that town. Their rights as taxpayers are not recognized by the School Board, nor their rights as British Subjects by the Administrators of British Law. There is great reason to believe that counsel employed by them on the occasion in question was brought over to the side of the Slaveholders, as the most decided apathy was manifested to the business entrusted to them. The great fear of the white citizens seems to be that the Southern patronage at the Stephenson House will be withdrawn should attempts be promptly punished by the authorities. Hence the action of officials in letting the women off secretly, and the threats to arrest the colored people for mob violence. Such proceedings on the part of those claiming to be administrators of justice, whether intended or not, should call forth the condemnation of all honest men; their plain truckling to the spirit of oppression is calculated to invoke, as it did on that occasion, the most bitter feelings. There is a way to reach such officials, the people know it, and we trust they will see to walking in it.”⁵

The publication and spread of these stories only fed the rumour mill and compounded fear that refugees would carry with them. There was no stopping the rumour mill, but the next several articles from the St. Catharines Journal regarding the Black community were regarding public meetings. There is no evidence to suggest that refugees immediately took to an ‘underground’ way of life to cope with that fear.

A year later, Benjamin Drew published A North Side View of Slavery. The Refugee: Narratives of the Fugitive Slaves in Canada. The interviews with Freedom Seekers recount their harrowing escapes and journeys, and near-death experiences on their way to Canada. They often talk about how they were originally kidnapped into slavery. Some talk about how they were captured on the first, second, and third attempts at escape. Their experiences in slavery and escape are usually 99% of their published interview; the remaining text confirming their happiness having reached safety and freedom in Canada.

Drew was publishing his obvious propaganda piece directly in response to A South Side View of Slavery published in 1854, so we should be wary of what he left out to better emphasize the evils of slavery. But that none of the interviews in St. Catharines mentioned the imminent fear of being kidnapped – with kidnapping being perhaps the most traumatizing experience of their former lives – is telling.

The mixture of feelings, facts, and the flurry of information (and misinformation) from the various actors and sources only help to complicate our understanding of this history. Even when individuals are in direct risk of extradition or kidnapping, those around that individual don’t flee to hide, they act publicly.

While open bounty hunting was rare (I feel that sometimes we imagine bounty hunters as wearing badges or uniforms that identify them as such – they didn’t always), the presence of Americans in St. Catharines was quite common and very much publicized for the enjoyment of the Confederate-sympathizer population resident in St. Catharines. You read that correctly: St. Catharines welcomed Freedom Seekers and Confederates with equal enthusiasm. Members of the Confederate government and armies vacationed in St. Catharines during the Civil War. Some even stayed and took up residence; or returned to St. Catharines after the war and were welcomed as heroes (including Jefferson Davis).

That Americans with good and bad intentions travelled to St. Catharines for vacation, or to make contact and even return refugees to the United States was very true. But that people hid in secret hiding places for years while living in St. Catharines is just not true and is not supported by the historical evidence; indeed, the letter published in the Provincial Freeman (the most widely published and read Black newspaper in Upper Canada) named the girl who was the target of the scheme in 1855. Everyone knew she was here; a large group of community members attended her known location to keep her from falling victim to the trick.

So, what does that make of our collective understanding of the important role people in St. Catharines played in the success of the Underground Railroad. It doesn’t change a thing. St. Catharines was still home to over 800 refugees by the mid-1850s. Though they faced racial discrimination and prejudice, they were also supported by groups like the Friends of the Refugee Slaves Society.

Most of all, they lived openly in freedom legally protected, which seems like a much better legacy for us to celebrate and commemorate than their having to hide in cellars, attics, and tunnels.

Despite the mostly perceived but sometimes real threat that Freedom Seekers could be abducted back to the United States, what were those protections that kept them free and safe in Canada? That’s coming up next week in Part 2 of Hiding in Plain Sight on February 9.

Adrian Petry is a public historian and Visitor Services Coordinator at the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre.

Part 1 Footnotes and Series Bibliography

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1. Natasha Henry Dixon. “Chloe Cooley.” In Making Her Mark: The Women of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Niagara-on-the-Lake: Niagara Historical Society, 2021. 16-18. ↩︎
2. Sarah Bradford. Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. Auburn, New York: W. J. Moses, Printer, 1869. 19. ↩︎
3. The St. Catharines Journal, January 22, 1852. ↩︎
4. The St. Catharines Journal, August 30, 1855. ↩︎
5. The Provincial Freeman, September 15, 1855. ↩︎

Books and Peer Reviewed Articles

Butler, Nancy and Michael Power. Slavery and Freedom in Niagara. Niagara-on-the-Lake: Niagara Historical Society, 1993.

Dunlop, R. G., et al. “Records Illustrating the Condition of Refugees from Slavery in Upper Canada before 1860.” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 13, No 2. April 1928, pp. 199-207.

Drew, Benjamin. A North Side View of Slavery – The Refugee: Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada (1856). Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2008.

Halty, Nina. From Slaves to Subjects: Forging Freedom in the Canadian Legal System. Florida Atlantic University, 2017.

Howe, Samuel Gridley. Report to the Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, 1864: The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West. New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969.

Howe, Samuel Gridley. “Howe Commission Report Testimony 1863, St. Catharines Section and 1 Suspension Bridge Interviews.” As transcribed by Donna Ford. St. Catharines: St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre, 2014.

Pennee, Donna Palmateer. “Benjamin Drew and Samuel Gridley Howe on Race Relations in Early Ontario: Mythologizing and Debunking Canada West’s “Moral Superiority.” Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 56, No 1. Winter 2022, pp. 99-123.

Murray, Alexander L. “The Extradition of Fugitive Slaves from Canada: A Re-evaluation.” The Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 43 No. 3. December 1962, pp. 298-314.

Silverman, Jesse H. Kentucky, Canada, and Extradition: The Jesse Happy Case. Louisville: Filson Club, 1980.

Winks, Robin W. The Blacks in Canada: a History. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997.

Newspapers

St. Catharines Constitutional, 1861-1867.

St. Catharines Journal, 1826-1860.

The Provincial Freeman, 1855.