Avon River Heritage Society
  • About
    • Avon River Heritage Society
    • Artifacts & Archives
    • The Avon River
    • Meet the People in our Neighbourhood >
      • Dawn Allen, August 21st, 2020
      • Sara Beanlands, July 22nd, 2021
      • Carolyn Connors, July 30th, 2020
      • Carolyn Connors, July 21st, 2021
      • Louis Countinho, August 13th, 2020
      • Sean Countinho, January 13th, 2021
      • Eva Evans, July 24th, 2020
      • Elizabeth Ferguson, July 27th, 2020
      • Nicholas Hughes, August 6th, 2020
      • Olwynn Hughes, August 11th, 2020
      • Kim Lake, January 18th & 21st, 2021
      • Trudy Lake, March 13th, 2022
      • Raymond Parker, August 12th, 2020
      • Raymond Parker, July 7th, 2021
      • Zacchary Paul, August 21st, 2021
      • Tacha Reed, August 27th, 2020
      • Allen Shaw, January 18th, 2021
      • Carolyn vanGurp, July 16th, 2020
      • Abraham Zebian, August 24th, 2020
    • Avondale Walking Tour
    • Fundraising
    • Book an Appointment
  • History
    • Natural History >
      • Highest Tides in the World
      • Tidal Bore
      • Avon Peninsula Ecology
      • Birds of the Avon
      • Marine and Freshwater Species of the Avon
      • Karst Environment
      • Gypsum
      • Avon Peninsula Watershed Preservation Society >
        • Avon Peninsula Watershed Preservation Society, Interview with President, Raymond Parker
    • Mi'kmaq >
      • Mi'kmaq Birch Bark Canoes
      • Mi'kmaq of the Avon River >
        • Treaty Truckhouse 2 & Zacchary Paul
    • The Coming of the Europeans
    • The North American Colonies
    • Acadians >
      • Pisiquit
      • Acadians of the Avon River
      • Village Thibodeau (Poplar Grove)
      • Acadian Families After Expulsion
    • New England Planters >
      • New England Planters in Avondale >
        • Genealogy
        • James and Lydia Mosher
    • Loyalist
    • African Nova Scotians
    • Local Home Histories >
      • 28 Chip Hill Road
      • 51 Avondale Road
      • 38 Avondale Road: The Clifford Mosher House
      • 58 Avondale Road
      • 60 Avondale Cross Road
      • 71 Avondale Road: The John A. Harvie House
      • 354 Belmont Road: The Yellow House
      • 603 Belmont Road: Wallace Point
      • 801 Avondale Road
      • The Acadia House
      • The Avondale Church
      • The Avondale Parsonage
      • The Church Farm
      • The Fred Robart House
      • The Henry Lyon House
      • The House Across From The Church
      • The John E.F. Mosher House
      • The Knowles Homestead
      • The Mounce Mansions >
        • Captain George R. Mounce House
        • The Thomas A. Mounce House (Honeymoon House) >
          • Interior of the Honeymoon House
      • The Mrs. Dunham Hotel
      • The Old Newton Mosher House
      • The Old Stone House >
        • The Mystery of the Fieldstone House
      • The Roley Mosher House
      • The W.H. Mosher House
    • The Avondale School
    • Golden Age of Sail >
      • The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of Sail in Newport
      • The Mosher Shipyards
      • Sailing Ships, Sugar, and Salt
      • Vessels of the Avon River
      • Shipbuilding Process
      • Shipbuilding Tools
      • Ship Directories
      • The Avon Spirit
      • Kings Wharf
      • The Hamburg >
        • Obituary Capt. Andrew B. Coldwell
        • The Hamburg and Alice Coalfleet’s Diary
      • Captain George Richard Mounce Sr
      • Annie Armstrong Mounce Correspondence 1875-1892
      • Captain Daniel William Dexter & The Emma Payzant >
        • Captain Daniel William Dexter and Family, Interview with Debbie Siler, July 21st, 2021
        • Diary of Sarah Dexter, 1892-1893
      • The Rotundus
    • Avondale Wharf & The Landing
    • Community Orchard
    • Edmund McCarthy
  • Arts & Culture
    • The Great Little Art Show >
      • Great Little Art Show 2021 - Artists
      • Great Little Art Show 2021 - Artwork
      • Great Little Art Show 2022 - Artists
      • Great Little Art Show 2022 - Artwork
    • Artists Landing Art Gallery
    • Open Studio at the Museum
    • Full Circle Festival >
      • Sofa Sundays
      • Solstice Market
    • Artisans in Action >
      • Artist in Residence 2022
      • Paint Avondale
    • Avondale Wharf Day
    • Honey Harvest Festival
    • Yoga, Meditation, Free Writing Series
    • Lyrics & Letters Concert/Workshop
  • Events Calendar
  • Planters Sea Chest Gift Shop
  • Lydia and Sally Cafe
  • Rentals
  • Volunteer and Employment Opportunities
  • How to find us!

African Nova Scotians

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Pre-Planter or French Period (1604-1758)
African Nova Scotians have been in the Bay of Fundy area since Mathieu da Costa was an interpreter between the Mi’kmaq and Samuel de Champlain around 1604. Slaveholding in Nova Scotia dates back to the French colonial period, with about 350 enslaved Africans among the inhabitants of Louisbourg. In 1750, about 13% of Halifax’s population were enslaved Africans.                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                      

Planter Period (1760 to 1781)
New England Planters, arriving in the 1760s, brought hundreds of enslaved Africans with them. At least three of the early 1760s grantees of Newport had “owned” enslaved Africans. The 1767 Newport Township census lists an African woman and girl, brought from Scituate, Massachusetts by William Haliburton’s family. In 1774, Haliburton offered a 4-year old enslaved boy named Prince as surety in mortgage negotiations, and in 1779 Haliburton sold enslaved Fillis to the West Indies for £35 (States, “Presence and Perseverance: Blacks in Hants County, Nova Scotia, 1871-1914”).  That same year in Windsor, Joseph Northrup sold enslaved 'Mintur' to John Palmer. Reverend Breynton of St Paul's Anglican Church, Halifax, sold enslaved 'Dinah' to Peter Shey in 1776. Henry Denson of Falmouth ran his estate with five to sixteen enslaved people in 1770.

Loyalist Period (1782 to 1807) 
In the 1780s, Loyalists brought at least 1,500 enslaved Africans to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Some of the enslaved men, women, and children worked on farms, orchards, in construction, in domestic servitude, and skilled trades, including ship-building, in Falmouth, Newport, Summerville, Windsor, Rawdon, and Douglas. In the 1790s, there were 22 enslaved Africans living in Newport and Kennetcook.  Nine enslaved people worked at the property of Captain John Grant in Summerville. A Newport history written in 1932 talks of residents visiting the former sleeping quarters of enslaved Africans who tended horses at the stage coach inn at Newport Corner. Image; Public Archives of Nova Scotia      
                                             
At the same time, about 3,500 Black Loyalists freed for their service to the British in the American Revolution arrived in Atlantic Canada in 1780s. Most received little or none of the land they had been promised, and in 1791 over 1,000 Black Loyalists boarded 15 ships in the Halifax bound for Sierra Leone in West African, where they are referred to, even today, as Scotians. 600 Jamaican Maroons came to live in Nova Scotia in 1796 and were hired as engineers to construct the Citadel at Halifax, but disillusioned with conditions here, four years later, they also departed for Sierra Leone. 

Black Refugees (1813-1834)
After fighting for the British in the War of 1812, about 2,000 Black Refugees arrived in Nova Scotia, many from the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia and Maryland. Many of today’s African Nova Scotians descend from this group of immigrants. The majority of Black Refugees were given “licenses of occupation” instead of grants for poor-quality 10-acre lots that could not produce enough crops for a family to survive. Since they did not own the lands they lived on, neither could they sell the land to move to another part of Nova Scotia. It was not until 2019 that deeds for some of these lands (30% in one community) were granted. 

In communities including the Windsor Plains area, Black Refugees worked in many trades, farmed, quarried gypsum, and established a school and a church, which still serves the community. When the Black Refugees arrived, slavery was still practised. While Black Refugees carried a certificate of proof of their freedom, they suffered discrimination and under-employment, and were vulnerable to mistreatment and loss of their treasured liberty. In 1817 Lieutenant Governor Lord Dalhousie recommended that the Refugees be returned to their owners in the United States or sent to Sierra Leone. 

Before slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1834, African Nova Scotians contributed skills, knowledge, and labour under dreadful conditions that enriched “owners” and communities. Treatment of enslaved people was harsh, with lashing and hanging used as forms of punishment. Some were sold to the West Indies, families were divided through sale, and some were tricked into life-long indentures, while others were maimed or slain. Many attempted to escape slavery and poor treatment by running away; runaways were advertised in the Halifax Gazette, with rewards offered for their return. Others sought relief through the courts. The formal abolition of British slavery did not end Nova Scotians’ connections with slavery, and the last known slave-ship to transport Africans into the U.S. in 1860 was captained by Nova Scotian-born William Foster. The last survivor of this slave-ship, Cudjo Lewis, died in 1935.

Legacy
Despite centuries of discrimination and hardship, African Nova Scotians have contributed immensely to the economy and culture of Nova Scotia, developing their own African Baptist churches, schools and benevolent societies, which led to the establishment of many vibrant communities. Settlements at Preston, Hammonds Plains, Beechville, Five Mile Plains, Beaverbank, and Prospect Road can all be attributed to the strength of Black Refugees.                                             

In 1859, William Hall of Horton Bluff on the Avon River, the son of Black Refugees from Maryland, became the first Black and the first Canadian sailor to receive the Victoria Cross. Charles Spurgeon Fletcher, a Windsor native and a uranium expert, became Harvard University's first professor of African descent around 1935. Dr. George Elliott Clarke, Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2016-2017), among other notable people, comes from Windsor Plains. 




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Bedford Basin near Halifax. This detail of a painting by Robert Petley, c. 1835, is of a black family on the Hammond Plains Road. Some of the most significant eighteenth-century Black Loyalist.

Avon River Heritage Society Museum, 17 Belmont Road, Avondale/Newport Landing, Hants County, Nova Scotia, B0N 2A0
Email us at infoavonriver@gmail.com
Telephone us, May through October, at (902) 757-1718