Nova Scotia gave Black Refugees licences, not land

Nova Scotia gave many of the roughly 2,000 Black Refugees of the War of 1812 tickets of location or licences of occupation instead of ownership of the land they farmed, according to the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.

The refugees were enslaved people who fled the Chesapeake region and coastal Georgia for British ships. Pier 21 said about 3,500 escaped between 1813 and 1815, and nearly 2,000 were taken to Nova Scotia. In September 1813, 133 were landed at Halifax.

On April 2, 1814, Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane issued a proclamation offering freedom to anyone who joined the British side, with resettlement in British colonies in North America or the West Indies, Pier 21 said. The welcome that followed was less generous.

Lt.-Gov. Sir John Sherbrooke said in an Oct. 18, 1813, letter, cited by Pier 21, that he was confident the newcomers could “maintain themselves comfortably by their Labour.” Many arrived sick and destitute. Pier 21 said they were housed at the Halifax Poor House or at the Melville Island quarantine centre, which received more than 700 Black Refugees in its first months of 1815 and closed in 1816.

Healthy refugees were sent inland to look for work. The end of the war brought an economic depression, and Pier 21 said European immigration increased competition for jobs. Men found work on ships and in the dockyards, and women worked as domestic servants.

Most settled in rural areas around Halifax. The Nova Scotia Archives said the two largest groups were at Hammonds Plains and Preston, with smaller settlements at Beech Hill, Porters Lake, Five Mile Plains, Beaverbank, Avonport, Pictou, Mill Village and a place called Refugee Hill. Pier 21 also named Beechville among the largest communities.

The land itself was poor. Pier 21 said the soil was rocky and infertile, crops failed repeatedly, mice destroyed fields in 1815 and 1816 was the “Year without a Summer,” with the ground frozen until June. Many relied on government assistance and private charity.

On tenure, the two sources do not fully agree. Pier 21 said lots were limited to 10 acres and that the government withheld outright grants. The Nova Scotia Archives said refugees at Hammonds Plains received 10-acre grants in 1816, but that those at Preston were given only warrants and did not receive full title until 1842. Pier 21 said Preston was given 1,800 acres that year, and that Hammonds Plains received an extra 600 acres in 1834.

Political hostility was open. Pier 21 said the House of Assembly passed an address opposing Black Refugee immigration, dated April 1, 1815, and that provincial authorities protested the newcomers were “unfitted by nature to this climate.”

In 1821, the government pressed the refugees to move to Trinidad. Only 81 adults and 14 children went, Pier 21 said. Most refused to go to a place where slavery still existed. In 1834, the assembly passed a law barring liberated slaves from arriving in the province. Pier 21 said the imperial government disallowed it on discriminatory grounds.

The communities endured. Richard Preston founded the African Baptist Church in Halifax in 1832, and Pier 21 said he and Septimus Clarke founded the African United Baptist Association in 1854. (Canada News Media reported on that association.) In 1848, according to Pier 21, people from Hammonds Plains and Preston helped settle the community on Bedford Basin that became known as Africville, the subject of our earlier look at what Africville was.

Pier 21 said William Hall, the first Nova Scotian to receive the Victoria Cross, was the son of Black Refugees Jacob and Lucy Hall. His 1857 action at Lucknow is documented in our earlier report. The refugees arrived decades after the 1792 departure of Black Loyalists from the same province.

The Nova Scotia Archives said today’s African Nova Scotians still live in the historical settlement places, and that founding family names include Cromwell, Farmer, Hamilton, Langford, Marsman, Oliver, Slaughter and States.

If you find reporting like this useful, consider supporting Canada News Media, an independently owned Canadian newsroom.

Sources: Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, “Shaping a Community: Black Refugees in Nova Scotia” (pier21.ca); Nova Scotia Archives, African Heritage, Settlement (archives.novascotia.ca). The sources differ on land tenure at Hammonds Plains, as noted above.