Harriet Tubman

by Rosemary Sadlier

  In June 1852, a group of black military men were parading and, without provocation, were attacked by a group of white young people who also damaged or destroyed homes within the African-Canadian community. The sight of black men in military uniform invoked angry feelings since it was seen by the white youth as demeaning to the uniform. And, because blacks had a role in peacekeeping with the canal workers and in halting the illegal importation of goods from the United States, they were further resented as officers and as African Canadians. The town of St. Catharines voted in 1853 to pay for the damages to the black settlement caused by this riot.

  At St. Thomas Church, a black churchgoer, Augustus Halliday, felt that he had to take Communion last so that he would not offend other white churchgoers who would not want to use the Communion cup after him — this even by the 1900s and even though he was a property owner on Wellington Street. His concern was very real and appropriate for the recent historical and social experience of being a person of African descent in St. Catharines. A stained glass window depicting St. Thomas was dedicated on September 10, 1905, in the honour of Mr. Halliday who left money to the church in his will.

  In 1867, a young black woman who was employed at the Stephenson House, another of the city’s spas, attempted to buy a ticket for the mineral baths, which were supposed to have therapeutic properties, and was refused admission. In an editorial in the St. Catharines Journal, some attitudes about African Canadians using public facilities are reflected:

  … the managers would be extremely foolish to allow any such person to bathe with the guests of the house … for there are few who are willing to meet him [the black person] on terms of equality … So long as the coloured man behaves himself in this country he will be respected, but when he presumes to dine at a public house, or to wash in the same bath as a white man, he is going a little too far, and public opinion will frown him down.

  As long as the growing black population applied themselves to their work and made themselves as unseen as possible, there would be no problem. And with the 1840s arrival of European immigrants who were also eager to work, the interest in tolerating or supporting people of African descent was waning. After all, by the time of the 1863 abolition of slavery in the United States and the 1865 end of the Civil War, many people may have felt that the blacks could now go home, back where they came from, or, at the very least, someplace else. It was a time of white encouragement for blacks to resettle in the Caribbean Islands, Africa, or remote outposts as if their usefulness had been outlived, as if they were not rooted to the soil they had tilled, as if they were not entitled to live in the country that they had chosen or were born into. Black people were now discouraged from remaining in Canada, but the choice to remain was as challenging as the choice to return to the United States. Freedom in Canada did not also mean full and meaningful employment, full and regularized living arrangements, equal and appropriate education and training for the young, or the possibility of living as if they were the same as anyone else. Though coloured people envisioned their broad entitlement of the same full freedoms granted to others, their race and history did not make this a reality.

  The Common Schools Act of 1850 allowed for the creation of separate schools for blacks and Catholics. While blacks wanted to send their children to the best equipped or the nearest schools, white residents protested the integration of schools, so the act was used to create separate institutions. Advertisements in the St. Catharines Standard required teachers with a third-class standing qualification teach at the coloured school, while white students would be taught by teachers with no less than second- or first-class standing. Black parents used the power of the vote to defeat an unhelpful school trustee who was felt to be supportive of segregated schools. Protests continued until 1873, at which time the St. Catharines Committee on School Management reported that “mixing coloured and white children in the same classes would prove destructive to the efficiency of the school.”

  Schools in St. Catharines were later integrated despite the concerns of a few about the effects of social contact between the races. It is important to note that the population of St. Catharines included some families of Native Canadians who lived among the descendants of Africa or Europe. These families were sometimes families of mixed heritage, so the schools that these children attended may have reflected the perceptions of the time regarding racial classification. Clearly, larger settlements of Native peoples existed in other areas of southern Ontario, especially near Brantford.

  7

  Life in St. Catharines

  The central location of St. Catharines, protected in the lee of the Niagara Escarpment, had made it the most populated Native Canadian area in Canada early in history. Its picturesque site was attractive to the first settlers who arrived during the American War of Independence as Loyalists. However, there was a need for water power to help with the running of mills. This led to the initiative by William Hamilton Merritt to follow through on the 1793 proposal of Robert Hamilton to create a canal from the Welland River, near Lake Erie, up to Lake Ontario. On October 24, 1829, the first Welland Canal was operational, although work continued on it until 1931 to reduce the number of locks and to enlarge its depth in order to facilitate the quick movement of larger ships through the canal. A writer of the time commented on the appeal of the area:

  No work in Europe or America will bear comparison with its usefulness. In touching upon the mighty results which must soon follow its completion, the truth will assume the appearance of the most extravagant exaggeration, to those who do not make themselves acquainted with the singular geographical position of North America. The great inland seas above the Falls of Niagara, containing more than half the fresh water upon this planet — bounded by upwards of 400,000 square miles of as fertile land as can be found on the globe, and exceeding in length of coast, five thousand miles. These seas, affording the most beautiful and commodious means of internal communication ever beheld, on a scale which science and human labour or the treasures of a world cannot rival — can be approached by ships, only through the Welland Canal, with which in point of usefulness, no other work of the kind in Europe or Asia, ancient or modern will bear any comparison.

  By 1835 St. Catharines was known as one of the terminals of the Underground Railroad. Canadian slavery had been abolished since August 1, 1834, and Upper Canada in the 1850s was still part of the British Empire. One of the symbols of the British monarchy is a lion, so when Harriet would speak of being under the “lion’s paw” it meant to be under the protection of British authority. It was understood that Queen Victoria, her government, and her armies would protect the freedom of self-emancipated people. While few records exist, it is likely that Harriet Tubman supported herself in much the same way she did in Philadelphia or Cape May. She likely worked as a housekeeper, cook, or laundress while in St. Catharines, which is in keeping with the types of jobs that other black women would have had. Service positions were occupations that many blacks and lower class whites were relegated to; only a few were able to break into businesses of their own. But these were people seeking to survive, and any respectable means of earning money for their survival would be acceptable. These were also the types of jobs that would allow Harriet to have the flexibility to begin and quit as she wished, making it easy to leave her job and carry out other rescue missions in the south. Harriet never asked for anything for herself, but if her wages did not supply her with enough money for the care of the many fugitives or self-emancipated people she had living with her, she might have turned to others for assistance.

  Black men, and others, found work on the Welland Canal. The Canal itself helped industries develop that needed labourers — grist mills, flour mills, salt springs, foundries, machine shops, saw mills, woollen factories, distilleries, newspapers, ship yards, and dry docks — and blacks were called in to patrol the Welland Canal to keep the peace between Catholic and Protestant workers of Irish ancestry. The Canal provided cheap and plentiful power for the mills and manuf
acturing that developed. The security role for blacks was an extension of their military service in the Colored Corps, and continued until the Canal was almost complete and did not need so many workers. The Colored Corps had a role in customs and excise problems as they worked to end smuggling from the United States, and they would later work on road construction.

  St. Catharines had the “look of prosperity and business capabilities, far in advance of its size and appearance.” It was a booming industrial town that needed and welcomed workers. Most of the American- or Canadian-born blacks who appeared in the Canada census by 1861 were self-supporting through working in St. Catharines as labourers, although some were skilled tradespeople such as masons, coopers, barbers, hairdressers, shoemakers, bartenders, boat drivers, or carpenters. Some men or women lived in the homes of wealthier whites and worked as servants, such as cooks, housekeepers, or care givers. Others were self-sufficient through farming. One visitor to the area noted:

  Scattered around, and within five miles, are large numbers of [black] farmers, many of whom have become wealthy since escaping into Canada. Going into the market on Saturday morning, I counted 37 colored persons selling their commodities, consisting of ducks, chickens, eggs, butter, cheese, hams, bacon, vegetables and fruits of all kind.

  For many, St. Catharines’s prosperity made it a likely place to settle in for good, but others moved on to cities serviced by the Canal, Toronto, smaller towns, and, by the end of the Civil War, back to the United States to try to reconnect with family. Blacks tended to live close to each other because they faced similar economic and social barriers, and their homes tended to be on the outskirts of the city on land that was not as desirable at the time. Because they lived close together, churches and schools grew to meet their needs as a community. African Canadians were sometimes settled together, as with the military, or they were attracted to areas where there was tolerance for their presence or because of reasonable rates. The St. Catharines black community lived primarily in the area bounded by North, Geneva, Welland, and Williams Streets. St. Catharines blacks were within this area because Oliver Phelphs and William Hamilton Merritt owned a large tract of land bordering on North Street. In 1835, African Canadians were encouraged to buy land there because they could obtain favourable terms to purchase the land, including long leases. It seems that in some cases payments were not made by the black residents if they were unable to manage the expense and that interest was not charged. Merritt also donated a lot of land for the building of a church and meeting hall for the black community along the North Street area.

  William Hamilton Merritt was the child of former American residents who had fought on the side of the British during the American War of Independence. Not able to remain in the newly independent country, the Merritts initially moved to New Brunswick and then settled in the area now known as St. Catharines. William became a successful businessman and politician, and he was the visionary of the Welland Canal and the Niagara Suspension Bridge. Additionally, as his abolitionist views supported the growing numbers of enslaved African Americans entering St. Catharines as free people, understanding the oppression they had experienced in slavery.

  The Hon. Mr. Merritt spoke in terms of condemnation of the institution, and favorably of the conduct of the refugee slaves in this part of Canada, and recommended that something practical be done in their favor.

  — St. Catharines Standard, April 1852

  Merritt’s provision of land to what is now the Salem Chapel British Methodist Episcopal Church may have cost about 1 dollar (5 shillings at the time). Merritt also worked to establish the Fugitive Slave Friends Society to proactively seek clothing, books, and funds to support the expanding community of new free black people.

  Oliver Phelps was from Connecticut where he had worked as a contractor. He immigrated to St. Catharines and experienced great wealth through his business acumen — investing and profiting from investment in trade industries. He is responsible for naming both Geneva and Court Streets in the area of town where he, along with William Hamilton Merritt, owned most of the land.

  St. Catharines was a beautiful centre with a mild climate that produced plenty of food and work through the many orchards and gardens. The Welland Canal and the abundant water power of the region made navigation central to the economy and helped in the development of goods and services. St. Catharines was close to other centres and is noted as having a good public spirit. The St. Catharines black community was viewed in a positive light. According to Mary Ann Shadd, the first black woman publisher/newspaper person in North America:

  During my stay at St. Catharines I had frequent opportunities of examining the general improvements of the place and was in no way more gratified than when viewing the snug homesteads of the colored people. Messrs. Maddern, Young, Lindsay and others are adding largely by their enterprise to the beauty of the place. Their success is a standing refutation to the falsehood that begging is needed for the fugitives of St. Catharines.

  Another writer, William Wells Brown, describes the “coloured settlement” as follows:

  The colored settlement is a hamlet, situated on the outskirts of the village, and contains about 100 houses, 40 of which lie on North Street, the Broadway of the place. The houses are chiefly cottages, with from 3 to 6 rooms, and on lots of land nearly a quarter of an acre each. Most of the dwellings are wood-colored, only a few of them having been painted or whitewashed. Each family has a good garden, well-filled with vegetables, ducks, chickens, and a pig-pen, with at least one fat grunter getting ready for Christmas. The houses with the lots upon which they stand, are worth upon average $500 each. Some of them have devoted a small part of the garden to the growth of the tobacco plant, which seems to do well. Entering North Street at the lower end, I was struck with surprise at the great number of children in the street.… The houses in the settlement are all owned by their occupants, and from inquiry I learned that the people generally were free from debt. Out of the eight hundred in St. Catharines, about seven hundred of them are fugitive slaves. I met one old lady who escaped at the advanced age of eighty-five years — she is now one hundred and four. Among them I found seventeen carpenters, four blacksmiths, six coopers, and five shoemakers. Two omnibuses and two hacks are driven by colored men. Not long since, a slave run away from Virginia, came here, and settled down; a few months after, his master “broke down,” cheated his creditors, escaped to Canada, came and settled by the side of his former chattel. Their families borrow and lend now, upon terms of perfect equality.

  As St. Catharines was becoming more noted as a terminus on the Underground Railroad, the Secretary of State for Canada, Henry Clay, stated in 1828 that he viewed “the escape of slaves as a growing evil which menaces the peaceful relations between the United States and Canada.” He hoped to see an extradition treaty to return runaways to their owners — this even after black people had been invited to join the side of the British and be granted their freedom for their loyalty. However, just as there were anti-slavery sympathizers among the residents of St. Catharines, there were also residents and visitors alike who felt the correct position for an African was in service at the least or in bondage at the most.

  While black Canadians helped in the building of at least one of the resort spas — the Welland House, renowned for its bathhouse with healthful saline and mineral spring waters, and worked as waiters — they were denied service because they were black. Neighbouring towns also excluded them from renting hotel rooms. In one case, a black minister and his wife travelling through Drummondville and Niagara Falls from Brantford, on their way to Buffalo, were refused accommodation during a snowstorm in January 1852. Wealthy (white) American tourists or political refugees from the States, who had little difficulty finding accommodation, would come in and pay $2 to $3 dollars a day and often reside at the spas for the season from April to October. In 1854, blacks were outraged that the public buses of the St. Catharines House and the American Hotel would not carry them. Two black ministers of
the AME Church were among those denied transportation. At a meeting called at the BME Church at Geneva and North on August 4, a plan of action was developed by the ministers, some waiters of the hotels owning the buses, and other residents. The head waiter of the American Hotel threatened to quit his job in protest, followed by support from a St. Catharines House waiter, who stated that “insults and outrages heaped on others, on account of prejudice (are the same as if) … committed against himself.” It was decided at that community meeting: