York University
Free and farming: Black Agriculture in 19th Century Southwestern Ontario
View of the Thames River along which Black emigrants travelled and established communities in the 19th century.
As I “wander” through Ingenium’s digital collection in search of Black agricultural life in 19th century Southwestern Ontario, I imagine myself walking in the dense brush of Ontario forests, before the trees were uprooted through colonial land development. Running my hands along the bark of the oak and sugar maple – how would I make a home here?
By 1860, tens of thousands of fugitive slaves had arrived in Canada West (now known as Ontario) through anti-slavery organizing and were likely asking themselves this very question. Thousands of these Black settlers began their new lives as independent farmers, in both formalized Black settlements (such as the Wilberforce Settlement, the Dawn Settlement, the Buxton Mission, and the Refugee Home Society) and on lands adjacent to existing towns and cities (such as Sandwich, Amherstburg, and Colchester). These sites functioned as terminus points for the Underground Railroad, along which the Detroit River and Thames River provided paths for travel. They also represent the beginning of a long, meaningful, and under-recognized history of independent Black agriculture in Canada.
As one of Ingenium’s Black and African Canadian Scientific and Technological Innovations fellows, I considered how tools and technologies in Ingenium’s collection could help tell stories of Black farmers establishing agricultural homesteads and communities in the 19th century.
Photo Credit
An axe in the Ingenium collection.
Black settlements at this time were state-sanctioned efforts to create a pathway for fugitive slaves to gain independence. A formalised initiative, such as the Elgin Association or the Canada Mission, would secure a land grant to purchase a certain acreage for parcelling and sale to Black emigrants arriving as fugitive slaves.[1] On these lots, the settlers would erect houses and barns; farm a variety of crops including wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, and fruit; raise livestock such as cattle, oxen, sheep, and horses; and establish sawmills, grist-mills, and factories (producing, for example, rope or brick).
A homemade bucksaw.
The first step in building these settlements was to clear the forested land and prepare it for common crops and livestock. With little to no resources or funds, this labour would have been accomplished with bare hands or basic tools such as an axe and saw; Black women and children would have worked the land alongside Black men. In the first months and possibly longer, they may have slept in canvas tents for shelter, until they could build a log cabin.
Photo Credit
A canvas dining or living tent in its storage and carrying bag.
Both the Buxton Mission and the Refugee Home Settlement implemented strict requirements for land clearance and building in the first year. In the former, Black settlers had to clear six acres and erect a log cabin of eighteen by twelve feet minimum, and at least thirty-three feet from the road. In the latter, the settlement bylaws included such stipulations as:
Article 4. No person shall be allowed to remove any timber from said land until they have first made payment thereon.
Article 7. No dwelling-house can be erected on said land by settlers containing less than two rooms, nor shall they have chimneys of wood and clay, but of brick and stone.
Failure to meet these expectations resulted in eviction from the land. Black settlers accomplished these daunting tasks using their agricultural knowledge, community labour, and persistent spirit. This included, for example, Abraham Doras Shadd, who erected a barn in North Buxton, which is now preserved at the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum.
A Washington Press, commonly used in Canada.
After the dissolution of these formal settlements, Black farming families persisted in the region. They contributed to the establishment of thriving communities as “freed from the constraints of American racial theory and practices, black emigrants went about the business of creating a prosperous and equitable life [...] they entered trades and professions; bought land and businesses; established churches and schools; published newspapers and slave narratives; voted and held office; and organized self-help, literary, social, religious, and antislavery organizations” (Ripley 3).
In one of these newspapers, The Provincial Freeman, readers would have read agricultural articles next to anti-slavery treatments; pieces such as “Anthony Burns a Freeman” appearing on the front page alongside the recurring column “Agriculture Etc.” The column, a bulletin for agricultural knowledge transfer, included recommendations such as “Hilling Corn” or “Why Gardens are More Permanently Productive than Farm Fields,” and this demonstrated a culture of technical experimentation among Black farmers.
A traction engine manufactured in Brampton, Ontario.
As they developed their own agricultural networks, selling in the Chatham and Detroit markets in particular, their capacities to purchase technologies grew. William Shadd, for example, a descendent of Abraham Doras Shadd, went on to purchase a traction engine in 1886, which was the latest in steam-engine technology at the time. In 1888, he purchased a threshing machine. All of this technology was put to communal use across neighbouring Black farms.
While the Ingenium Centre collection does not, to date, appear to house materials directly from any of these early Black settlements, its artifacts and archives are valuable prompts and props for the project of telling Black Canadian histories. When we imagine how these early Black settlers made a home here, or pay tribute to the labour their bodies accomplished, the Collection helps us ask: it might not have been with this axe, and they may not have slept in this tent, but how can this axe and this tent be a window into Black agricultural life past and present?
A threshing machine produced in Stratford, Ontario.
1 Black emigrant is the term commonly used in the literature of the time period.
Further Readings:
Bristow, Peggy, editor. We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History. University of Toronto Press, 2016.
Peter Ripley, C., editor. The Black Abolitionist Papers, Volume III The United States, 1830-1846. The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
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Mila Natasha Mendez
Mila Natasha Mendez is a doctoral candidate in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies at York University, Toronto. They were a Black and African Canadian Scientific and Technological Innovations fellow at Ingenium in 2024.
