In the 2026 Black History Month blog series public programmer and culinary historian Abbey Stansfield examines the important intersections between food and the daily experiences of Freedom Seekers in mid-19th century St. Catharines.

Catch part one No Hogs, No Cows, and All Such Stuff, released February 7.

Part 2: That’s How It Came to Grow There

In part one of this series I made a case demonstrating that despite plenty of misinformation at the time, Freedom Seeker refugees would have found plenty of food when they arrived in St. Catharines. In part two, we’ll examine more nineteenth century sources through a culinary historian lens and explore the prevalence of corn and cornmeal in nineteenth-century St. Catharines.

“I was told before I left Virginia- have heard it as common as talk, that the wild geese were so numerous in Canada, and so bad, that they would scratch a man’s eyes out; that corn wouldn’t grow there nor anything else but rice…”

– Testimony of Daniel Josiah Lockhart as it appears in The Refugee by Benjamin Drew, 1856.

Lockhart’s testimony provides valuable context to both the myths spread by enslavers to hold their enslaved peoples in place, and to further the understanding of the availability and prevalence of corn in St. Catharines.

I can’t ignore the comment regarding wild geese and I’m sure that caught your eye, too. But, hopefully not to the extent that the pesky geese may scratch them out! While anyone who has had a run-in with a flock of annoyed Canadian Geese will tell you, they can be vicious, and that they can be a nuisance to farms. However, were geese such a problem that they limited the availability of agricultural products as common talk proclaimed? Unlikely.

More seriously up for exploration is the productivity of agriculture in an industrializing economy like St. Catharines in the 1850s and 1860s. Historical sources indicate that St. Catharines was productive and indeed enjoyed the moniker “The Garden City” for much of its history, rendering the myth almost laughable.

However unbelievable it might seem to us today, the pervasive idea that one might not be able to grow corn at the terminus of the Underground Railroad was enough to give pause to any Freedom Seeker. Many enslaved persons were experienced farmers since large numbers of enslaved peoples were the backbone of agriculture in the United States. Their working lives were spent on the land and producing crops. With limited formal education it was common for most Freedom Seekers to lean on the skillset they learned while enslaved, including in farming.

Similarly to pork (as discussed in part one) corn was an important staple across North America. Indigenous Peoples grew corn for millennia (and several Indigenous groups cultivate traditional Three Sisters crops throughout North America today). We should not underestimate the weight of a rumour to the success of corn crops in the decision making of Freedom Seekers of whether to risk the journey on the Underground Railroad.

In part one of the series, I shared the results of the Agricultural Society of St. Catharines and Grantham exhibition which awarded prizes for agricultural products including corn and wheat. Curious about to what volume corn was produced, my research led me to discover tips and tricks for producing the highest corn yield possible.

Published in a November 1869 edition of the St. Catharines Constitutional “Corn and Hogs” provides local farmers with yield ratios “From carefully conducted experiments by different persons, it has been ascertained that one bushel of corn will make a little over 10 ½ lbs of pork gross.” The article notes the importance of high yields for both human and livestock consumption. The same article details the expected rate of shrinkage in the corn crop and – perfect for our purposes – includes a recipe for corn bread. This is serious grain and corn production.

Grist mills were likewise big business in St. Catharines (and many communities like it in Upper Canada) in the early settlement era of the area. Grist mills – like the Morningstar Mill at Decew Falls – were built for processing grains but also became hubs of economic activity and could sometimes be attached to harvest season retail activity.

Before the automobile, the separation of rural and urban life was much more blurred. Agriculture and milling were central to life in St. Catharines despite its increasing urban character. Newspapers were frequently dominated by agricultural news, classifieds, and advertisements. An advertisement for Crown Mills – one of the first oldest mills in the area – ran in the Evening Journal on June 8, 1866. Thomas Simpson rented Crown Mills that season to (perhaps) seize an opportunity to compete with his former employers and called for wheat and corn to make flour and corn meal.

Much of the historical source material indicates that farming corn was quite successful and that the community was well equipped to process it. So, what about the Freedom Seekers? Those that took the risk must have been surprised to find fewer angry geese and much more corn upon their arrival.

Reverend L. C. Chambers reveals the situation of his 50-acre farm:

“Last year I had 350 bushels of wheat, 150 bushels of oats, and 100 bushels of peas. I own a house on that place 22×28. I have a barn on it 22×70… My farming utensils are second to none in the neighborhood. I own three horses, three colts, 14 heads of sheep, 8 head of cattle, a new lumber wagon that cost $68, a farming mill ($25), another light wagon ($40), a two-horse sled ($18), a cutter ($14), and a sulky ($25).”

– Testimony of Rev. L.C. Chambers as it appears in The Refugee by Benjamin Drew, 1856.

His testimony continues with the accomplishments of his farm and his neighbour’s farms:

“There is another man close to me, who came to this country six years ago, by the name of Henry Harris, who hires a lot of fifty acres next to me, and has two horses, a wagon, fine colt, and two cows. There is another man, living this side of me, by the name of Corsey, who owns fifty acres of land and has three fine horses, a flock of 25 or 30 sheep, and some 25 or 30 sheep, and some eight or ten head of cattle. His land is all paid for.”

– Testimony of Rev. L.C. Chambers as it appears in The Refugee by Benjamin Drew, 1856.

Chamber’s descriptions provide detail of three different Freedom Seekers who built successful farms since moving to Canada. Unfortunately, none of the sources I consulted provided corn yields of Freedom Seekers in St. Catharines, however, Benjamin Drew’s book The Refugee cites crop yield figures from 1853 on the Freedom Seekers farming in Buxton:

“Of the cleared land, 236 acres are in corn; 60 acres in wheat; 29 in oats, and 90 in other crops: making in all 415 acres under cultivation.”

– Benjamin Drew in The Refugee, 1856.

The Freedom Seekers managed to use their knowledge and skills to not only grow products they were familiar with but to also grow enough to make a living. While farming was difficult, hard work, and some experienced setbacks including vandalism, most of the Freedom Seekers who took up farming in Canda were successful. A far cry from the suggestion it be impossible for anyone to grow anything here. It’s notable that Freedom Seekers in Canada had better success with farming than the Freedpeople who remained in the American South who took up sharecropping after Emancipation. Historian Jenniffer Jenson Wallach explains that sharecropping in the American South after the Civil War entailed working the land of former enslavers in exchange for a percentage of what they grew. A system that was often rife with corruption and prevented Freedpeople from leaving by law until they had cleared debts, essentially holding them in enslavement in all but name. These conditions were reported on by the southern commissioners of the Freedman’s Inquiry Commission – the same that sent Samuel Gridley Howe to St. Catharines to compile the northern section of the report.

In part one of the series, we also heard from Joesph Smith and the struggle to sift through the misinformation with which Freedom Seekers found themselves inundated:

“… some five years after that [being told there are no homes, hogs, cows and nothing grows in Canada] they got some wild goose wheat [where he was working], that was called “Canada Wheat”, and I said “I thought they couldn’t raise anything in Canada. How did this wheat grow there?” “Why it [is] a warm, ridgy place” they said; “that’s how it came to grow there.”

– Testimony of Joseph Smith as it appears in the Freedman’s Inquiry Commission report by Samuel Gridley Howe, 1863.

Rumours aside, I think it’s important to also examine how Freedom Seekers used the corn and cornmeal they grew and processed. After all, the culinary aspect of our blog series this year is of equal (and delicious) importance. I found two different recipes that utilized cornmeal in 1862 editions of the St. Catharines Constitutional. One, Corn Meal Griddlecakes, stuck out to me as it is a variation of the [Corn] Meal Batter Cakes recipe listed in Malinda Russell’s cookbook.  The local publication of a recipe so similar in nature to one of Southern origins emphasizes the spread and influence of Southern and African American culinary traditions by Freedom Seekers arriving in St. Catharines. The newspaper’s version of the recipe includes the addition of sugar and sultanas. Alterations possibly made to make the recipe suitable for local tastes. With that in mind I decided to test the version from Malinda Russell’s cookbook as a version perhaps more traditional to the tastes of Freedom Seekers and since it was in Malinda’s cookbook that cornmeal was emphasized as central and traditional in this diet.

[Corn] Meal Batter Cakes

To one quart [corn] meal add one tablespoon lard, and enough hot water to scald the meal; stir it smooth; add enough sour milk to make a batter; break in two eggs; put into a pint of flour two teaspoons of soda and two teaspoons of cream of tarter; stir this in last and bake on a griddle.

– Malinda Russell in A Domestic Cookbook, 1866

This recipe appears straightforward, however, there are a few considerations when making it in a modern kitchen. The first take away is this recipe makes a lot of “batter cakes,” (I’d describe them as savory pancakes). The recipe is calling for 4 cups of cornmeal and 2 of flour to provide context.

1. The first step is to cook the cornmeal, so you do not have gritty “batter cakes.” After mixing 4 cups of cornmeal together with enough boiling water to make a paste and a tablespoon of lard you mix it until it becomes smooth.
2. I altered the recipe procedure at this point on my second trial to put the flour, baking powder, and cream of tartar together in a separate mixing bowl. To that I mixed in two medium sized eggs (these are closer in size to what an egg would have been in the 1800s).
3. To the flour mixture I alternated between adding the cornmeal mixture and buttermilk until I had a batter like a thick pancake batter.
4. I cooked them on a griddle pan and finished them in the oven (at 350 degrees Fahrenheit) while I made the others on the griddle.

The recipe made a savory cornmeal pancake, and our panel of official museum taste-testers couldn’t keep their hands off them! It took me a minute to wrap my head around the savory result primarily because it is shaped like a pancake, so I had similar expectations in terms of taste to a modern flour pancake recipe. However, the heartiness of this griddle cake underscored why I selected this recipe in the first place because culinary historians have identified this kind of hearty food which made up a large portion of the diet of Freedom Seekers when they had been enslaved.

Formerly enslaved peoples from across the United States revealed in testimony and other publications that cornmeal cakes like these were central to their diet. Perhaps my version was a bit more luxurious but even still, they are incredibly simple and could be made with only water and cornmeal.

Like in part one of the series and throughout my research, the connection to the lived experience of Freedom Seekers to food shows how important access to staples like corn was to not only survival, but also successful settlement. The ability to celebrate and practice culture through food and to be able to make a living is so natural for us, we probably couldn’t image not being able to practice our own family food traditions. We so often take access to the important foods in our lives for granted. Imagine not having access to something you eat everyday. That importance is only emphasized by the vigor with which enslavers spread rumours about the availability of food in Canada. And one can register the pride with which Freedom Seekers speak about their farming success despite those lies.  But, more than pride and success, the prospect of maintaining their hard-earned freedom and survival by being able to feed themselves regardless of the other barriers they found here.

Added to the risk of travelling the Underground Railroad makes the decision to go (to come to Canada) more weighty, meaningful, and moving. I for one will never underestimate the culinary or the historical importance of cornmeal again.

Stay tuned for part three of the series Everything They Had There Was Imported released February 21.

Catch part one No Hogs, No Cows, and All Such Stuff, released February 7.

Abbey Stansfield is a culinary historian and a public programmer at the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre.

Select Sources

St. Catharines Consitutional, St. Catharines Museum Archives

The Evening Journal, St. Catharines Museum Archives

Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission reports and transcripts, Library of Congress

Opie, Frederick Douglass. Hog & Hominy: Soul Food from African to America. Columbia University Press, 2008.

Russell, Malinda. A Domestic Cookbook: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen. University of Michigan Press, 2025.

Wallach, Jennifer Jensen. Getting What We Need Ourselves: How Food Has Shaped Agrican American Life. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.