This is part 3 of our annual Black History Month blog series. Read part 1 here or read part 2 here.

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 3: Living in Plain Sight

In the third part of my series exploring the myths around the lives of the Freedom Seekers who settled in St. Catharines, I want to show how lively their community could be. I don’t mean rambunctious, though at times excitements did arise. I mean the fullness of the community as represented by the daily lives of Freedom Seekers.

It’s the depth and breadth of the community settled by Freedom Seekers in St. Catharines that makes the myths about their lives so difficult to reconcile. That Freedom Seekers were so fearful of capture and kidnapping they hid in attics and basements and tunnels is ridiculous. They were far too busy rebuilding their lives.

“Refuge and Rest! These are the first ideas which arise in my mind in connection with the town of St. Catharines. I might mention here its pleasant situation, its commercial advantages, the Welland Canal, its telegraphic wires, its railroads, its famous mineral springs, and other matters interesting to the tourist; but we will step aside from these and look at St. Catharines as the peaceful home of hundreds of the coloured race. Of the population of about six thousand, it is estimated that eight hundred are of African descent. Nearly all the adult-coloured people have at some time been slaves.”¹

As Benjamin Drew recalled in this quote from his book The Refugee, Freedom Seekers in St. Catharines had settled and built a robust community to establish and support themselves and fellow Freedom Seekers. In this instance, community is not only the collection of individuals who share talents, skills, resources, and socio-cultural experiences, but also the geographic neighbourhood where Freedom Seekers were encouraged to concentrate their efforts.

As John Kinney, a Freedom Seeker and barber, reported to Samuel Gridley Howe in 1863:

“There are societies among the coloured people. There is one Society of women who have funds to take care of their coloured sick and bury the dead; there is a Masonic Lodge who take care of the Masons, there is another Society which meets every month, and each member puts in two or three shillings a month, and when any of the people are sick, they live on that first if they are obliged to apply to the Society.”²

Not to be flippant, but it’s tricky to organize, fundraise, advocate, promote, attend membership meetings, and help administer the benevolent programs run by these societies while hiding in someone’s basement.

The participation in community didn’t play out only in supporting recently arrived refugees (like the Refugee Slaves Friends’ Society) or the sick and destitute. It also meant collective action when the community faced prejudice.

Though the white residents of St. Catharines were outspoken in their support of the refugees and abolition, they were also, almost equally as outspoken in their prejudice for their new neighbors (or otherwise entirely silent against prejudice). This prejudice was institutionalized in town hall at its committees, including the Board of Education. The Board’s three white trustees had established segregated schooling in one of the public schools, but when the teacher was found to be a drunk, they refused to act, subjecting black students to inferior education (and a drunk teacher!). “Mr. James Brown has been teaching [at the coloured school] for the last six years and is a most shameful inebriate. The coloured people have demonstrated against it, until finally they have wrought the Board up to a conviction of the propriety of dismissing him…I opened this select school simply for the benefit of those who would not attend the public school, and I find I have more scholars that I expected. I have 37 on the roll and have had as many as 40.”³

You can read more about institutionalized prejudice and racism faced by the Black community in this time period in our 2020 blog series which examines the 1863 Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission report in full.

Not to be flippant, but you can’t protest to the Board of Education while hiding in an attic.

Indeed, Freedom Seekers were visible participants in all parts of city life. Those who were farmers went out and sold their goods at the Market Square. Those who were ministers went out and preached to their congregations. Those who were teachers went out and taught at schools. Those who were business owners established their shops.

Freedom Seekers found work and livelihoods right across the business community from barbering to blacksmithing to waitering at one of the very popular salt-spring hotels. This last example is especially interesting for historians since St. Catharines was simultaneously a well-publicized terminus of the Underground Railroad and a hotbed and favourite vacation spot of important Confederate politicians and soldiers. Eleazer Stephenson, the owner and operator of the famous Stephenson House Hotel, employed as many as 50 Freedom Seekers as waiters, cooks, maids in peak season. Prominent American-Confederates Jefferson Davis and family, and Mary Anna Randolph Custis (wife of General Robert E. Lee) stayed at Stephenson House. The possibility of interactions between prominent pro-slavery Confederate politicians and Freedom Seekers is the epitome of Hollywood theatrics, but exciting to imagine, nonetheless.

Rubbing shoulders with (possible) former enslavers doesn’t seem like behaviour of someone in hiding. Speaking of rubbing shoulders, J.W. Lindsay, later noted as one of the richest and most successful Freedom Seekers in St. Catharines (eventually worth $10,000 in the 1860s) was invited to a party thrown for then Attorney-General John A. Macdonald at the Welland House Hotel:

“What is called the Conservative Party here gave a dinner for John A. Macdonald… Macdonald stood in a prominent position to receive all who came, and I was introduced to him…and we had a hearty shake hands, and then I was introduced to several other distinguished gentlemen, and we shook hands. Well, soon after that, the dinner came on and Mr. Macdonald invited me up and set me down to the table. The table filled up with some of the most conspicuous men of the country and I was never better treated in my life…”⁴ Historians are agreed that the evidence doesn’t support the idea that Freedom Seekers continued to hide while they were resident in St. Catharines. Despite the many legal and illegal attempts of former enslavers and bounty hunters to visit St. Catharines to try to lure or capture illegally, or use tools like extradition to return them legally, Freedom Seekers continued to live in their freedom to the fullest.

Living as British Subjects

As historian Nina Halty argues in her paper From Slaves to Subjects: Forging Freedom in the Canadian Legal System Freedom Seekers, especially those free Blacks coming to Canada from the Northern States after 1850 (second Fugitive Slave Act), felt they must convey all the hallmarks of British subjecthood – clean, hard-working, sober, etc. – to continue to enjoy protections.

Attitudes reflecting such sentiments were registered in the testimony collected by Howe during his 1863 visit, from both Freedom Seekers and the white population of leaders and employers.

C.P. Camp, the town’s Clerk and Treasurer recorded this opinion of the refugees:

“The coloured people here get on very poorly. They steal our sheep, our chickens, and everything else. They are a curse to any country. I wish they were all back South, for my part. They are a lazy set, especially the young men. We have to support them while they live, and bury them when they die.”⁵

Which was refuted by John Kinney:

“If Mr. Camp says the coloured people are thieves, he is a liar and I will tell him so to his face. I have never seen so large a body of people as they are here who drank so little. It is very seldom you will see a man drunk in the street…It is unjust for a man to tell such falsehoods…the white people make them out worse than they are.”⁶

We can discern the defensiveness with which Kinney responds to Camp as the seriousness with which he took the perception of the refugees. Perhaps without the academic analysis applied here or by Halty, it seems everyone knew their continued acceptance and protection in St. Catharines relied on the perceptions held by the white population, rather than the moral and just right to freedom as promoted by contemporary abolitionists. This helps to draw a local example of Halty’s theory that the community’s response to the refugee crisis and protections offered weren’t based solely on a moral argument against slavery, but also required of the refugees “good behaviour.”

Another group of refugee immigrants who were not at risk of enslavement and had no interest in British Subjecthood were those from Ireland, especially Irish Catholics. Their persecution and expulsion from Ireland brought them to North America in huge numbers during this period. But the perception of their collective behaviour won them little accolade and did not risk them expulsion.

John Kinney’s testimony continued:

“If you asked Mr. Camp which class of people caused the county the most trouble, the Irish or the colored people, he would have told you if he told you the truth: the Irish.”⁷

The testimony that reveals all of these layered sentiments concisely is that of Eleazer Stephenson. He confirms the earnestness with which Freedom Seekers maintain themselves and perform their Subjecthood with diligence – in response to the requirement they do so by the community, and the lack of decorum and drunkenness that seems to have been pinned to the Irish:

“I don’t think there is as much crime among the coloured people as among the Irish – nothing like it…The coloured people are a much neater class of people, as a general thing, than the Irish…They are not quarrelsome, but good natured people, and very temperate as a body. I think the country would be worse off if they were all taken away. We want them very much. I employ fifty through the summer. I prefer them to Irish, as you can tell, or I would not employ them…”⁸

While the community had partially found confidence in 1838 in organizing their activism in aid of Solomon Moseby, and through the 1840s, they would continue to feel convinced that despite ongoing attempts to return them to slavery, the British Empire would protect them against future requests if they were good citizens.⁹

The layered complexity of the 20 previous years of legal battles over the extradition of Solomon Moseby, Jesse Happy, and Nelson Hackett had Freedom Seekers both organizing protests of extradition and advocacy for protections through “anti-slavery leagues, debating and literary societies, fraternal and benevolent associations, educational institutions, and fugitive slave relief and employment agencies.”¹⁰ The added sophistication of experienced activists gave additional confidence to the community to actively exercise their rights as subjects and to demand the protections entitled to them when they felt threatened.

Indeed, Canada – and specifically St. Catharines – provided the ideal home base for active abolitionist work, as represented by the visits to the city, of several abolitionists including John Brown. Black refugees established newspapers, conventions, churches, relief societies, and abolitionist organizations to mount a series of rhetorical, legal, and political attacks against slavery. In doing so, they concentrated and cemented their claim to subjecthood. As Halty argues: “In doing so, Canada’s black community harkened back to an elaborate mythology of “English Liberty,” where Englishmen considered themselves as not only free, but “unenslaveable” by virtue as their status as British subjects…and by explicitly appealing to this popular tradition in their petitions [and other activism], [they] situated themselves within an already established discourse that equated subjecthood and freedom.”¹¹

I have previously made the case that freedoms of the person enjoyed and protected by law did not translate into enjoyment of freedom from racism and prejudice. Indeed, there are mountains of evidence and documentation of the racism faced by Black refugees while resident in Canada.¹²

The case for hiding in the attics and tunnels and basements of St. Catharines, however, really is detrimental and opposes the goals of Freedom Seekers coming to Canada in the first place: to escape and fight enslavement, and to live a free life. They said it themselves:

“…The coloured people have their rights before the law; that is the only thing that has kept me here.”¹³

To keep those rights and freedoms before the law, they had to participate and live openly.

Why does it matter to Black History in St. Catharines if – over 150 years ago – they lived openly or once hid in someone’s attic?

That’s next time in the conclusion of Hiding in Plain Sight, coming February 23.

Part 3 Footnotes and Series Bibliography

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1. Benjamin Drew. A North Side View of Slavery – The Refugee: Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada (1856). Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2008, 41. ↩︎
2. Samuel Gridley Howe. “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, John Kinney testimony, 3. ↩︎
3. Howe Commission Report Transcripts, Elder Perry testimony, 13. ↩︎
4. Howe Commission Report Transcripts, J.W. Lindsay testimony, 23-24. ↩︎
5. Nina Halty, From Slaves to Subjects: Forging Freedom in the Canadian Legal System. Florida Atlantic University, 2017, 81-82. ↩︎
6. Ibid, 158. ↩︎
7. Ibid, 84. ↩︎
8. See: Samuel Gridley Howe. 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. ↩︎
9. Howe Commission Report Transcripts, Mrs. Brown testimony, 5. ↩︎

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.