Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada: an 1835 painting by Robert Petley shows Black Loyalists at the Minas Basin in Nova Scotia. Black settlers who came to Atlantic Canada with the promise of land sometimes found that it wasn't as good for farming as advertised, and other kinds of economic discrimination made their lives difficult.
Written by Graham Nickerson (MScEng'02, MA'22)
I first seriously considered a future doing history at the urging of Dr. Charmaine Nelson and Dr. John Leroux (PhD'20). At that time, my mind was still fully colonized, and I thought there was little to learn about Black Maritimers. When I was accepted as an MA student, I dove into a project that would both leverage my interest in historical studies and my background in geodesy and geomatics engineering. As the era of Black Lives Matter thrust onto the scene, my quiet research project transformed me into the Black guy everybody called when they needed a soundbite, or an essay written… "You've surprised me and have become a historian much faster than I expected," were Dr. Elizabeth Mancke's words as she informed me of my acceptance into the PhD program.
What follows are the ramblings of a Black historian whose entire perception of himself and the world around him has been repeatedly shattered and reassembled through interactions with some of the greatest historical thinkers this country has to offer. Not confined to the archives, where others see old stones in back of a house: my decolonized eyes see the dwellings of enslaved people, fieldstone graves for those unable to afford tombstones, or the products of the skilled black hands of long forgotten masons, sawyers and carpenters. My decolonized hands have built pit dwellings until sore and blistered and my decolonized lungs and heart have struggled to match the toil that my ancestors bore without revealing their hidden aspirations… if the sails of a British warship loomed on the horizon, they would free themselves.
Like most historians, I rely on documents to exchange knowledge, but I also use maps. By mapping evidence, and by making these maps available outside of academia and accessible to the public, I've entered a relationship, a social contract to build up a curated body of knowledge that places each of us inside of Black history. It is pervasive and expansive; Black history seems to inconveniently pop up in the places you least expect it. I say inconveniently, because the multitude of Black stories challenge the myths Canada tells about itself as the "land of freedom". For some, Canada did mean freedom, but for others, it just meant a continuation of bound servitude. My travels, listening to elders, squinting at centuries-old documents and the simple act of trudging through the bush in search of vanishing signs of long-gone communities have provided me with some very interesting tidbits of history…some of which I'll now share.
Part 1: Onward to Oblivion
The first known Black visitors to New Brunswick likely coincided with Dutch and French exploration of the Northeastern regions of North America. Champlain's explorations in the early seventeenth century for example may have been accompanied by the famed Mathieu da Costa, though plagued by scant records, we cannot confirm where da Costa may have travelled. There is documentary evidence of two other Black sailors, one accompanying the French headed to the Bay of Fundy, but dying en route, while the other is documented as a translator for the Dutch. For a brief period in the seventeenth century the Dutch had an increased presence in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and Bay of Fundy. Da Costa and the other Black explorers are early examples of a historical studies field called the "Black Atlantic", meaning the lesser known history of the settlement of the dispersed African diaspora. Historians suspect that in the early seventeenth century Black mastery of "trade Basque", a form of pidgin language used by Basque mariners to communicate with native people along both the African and Northwest Atlantic coast would be indispensable. Black translators could facilitate communication between Indigenous people, and the Dutch and French explorers.
A steady trickle of Black people arrived in the region with the French in increasingly exploitative relationships as a replacement for the dwindling supply of Panis (enslaved Native Americans from the Mississippi Valley). Under the Code Noir, draconian limitations on enslaved Africans and Afro-Caribbeans consigned them as chattel (essentially "things"). At the Fortress of Louisbourg, hundreds of enslaved Black people toiled as domestic labour, and in the fishing and shipping industries. At that time, New Brunswick's north shore existed in Louisburg's orbit, which, like Isle Saint-Jean (PEI), may have seen migrant enslaved labour accompanying merchant trade along the coast of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The first documented Black person in New Brunswick is recorded by a British (New England) party raiding the Saint John River, who in 1696 discovered a Black man formerly of Marblehead, Massachusetts, residing with the French and Wolastoqiyik across the river from where Oromocto stands today. The struggle between France and Britain would continue for nearly a century, but ultimately, the British defeated the French on the North American mainland, with the exception of the Louisiana Territories and several of the "sugar islands" in the Caribbean. Wresting control of the valuable Banks fishery and trade in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and the vast stretches of Boreal forests, Britain was able to dominate the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The British introduction of Planters after the expulsion also brought enslaved people with them, but it was the Loyalist's migration after the Revolutionary War that truly encompassed the region and transformed it into a society with slaves. Accompanying these new arrivals were many hundreds of enslaved Black people. And like any society with slaves, there were also acts of defiance. As early as 1767, early Planter settlers complained about Black resistance to their bondage.
Not all loyalists were White, as made evident by the arrival of hundreds of self-emancipated Black veterans, their families and other Black refugees. To be a free Black in the aftermath of the American Revolution, half a century before general emancipation in the British Empire, represented a remarkable situation given in its discordance with Britain's emergence as THE global purveyor of enslaved Black labour. Free Black communities fanned out from the major ports in Westmorland County at the head of the Bay of Fundy, in the Passamaquoddy Bay, and the largest group of Black migrants who disembarked in Saint John and its environments.
"To be a free Black in the aftermath of the American Revolution, half a century before general emancipation in the British Empire, represented a remarkable situation given in its discordance with Britain's emergence as THE global purveyor of enslaved Black labour."
Though I identify as African Nova Scotian, my great, great, great, great, grandfather Henry Gwin was one of the Black veterans to arrive at "River Saint John". As the currents of the evacuation carried Henry inexorably northward, his wife Peggy, one of the few self-emancipated who was denied passage to Nova Scotia, headed back South into the obscurity of the American slave. Peggy Gwin may have failed in her bid for freedom, but Peggy Wise, who like Henry was also born on Gwynn Island, Virginia, was one of the Black women enumerated in the Book of Negroes as heading to freedom on the Fundy coast, just not with Henry. I like to think that by guile, these two records chronicle the same Peggy, and that Henry and Peggy were eventually reunited in freedom.
Alone, and probably with a growing sense of betrayal, Gwin arrived at Mill Town on the Schoodic (St. Croix) River along with another hundred or so veterans of the Black Auxiliaries, many of whom were luckier than Henry and were accompanied by their wives and children. This group was amongst the last to leave New York City, and it isn't clear why they appeared in this corner of the province, but the Black Auxiliaries companies included both civil laborers and combat veterans; it is possible that Britain anticipated fortifying the new international border, as they'd done during the war in British outposts on the coast of New Jersey, in Savannah, Georgia, and East Florida during the Revolution.
Later, Gwin's trail emerges as an inhabitant of the "Negro Settlements" on the Nerepis River, upstream from Grand Bay, but by the time Captain Richerd (a.k.a. Crankapone Wheeler) mentions him in his petition beseeching Governor Carleton for more land, Gwin had already absconded with his government provisions. Perhaps after arriving in Saint John and viewing his allotment of land, Henry exercised his new liberty and high tailed it. Or, having been reunited with Peggy, discretion persuaded the couple to put some distance between them and the increasingly autocratic government of the newly independent province of New Brunswick. So, for reasons known only to himself, Henry (with Peggy?) chose Shelburne, Nova Scotia, and on his voyage there he would have encountered a steady stream of refugees heading in the opposite direction. Most White Loyalists (and probably their Black bondspeople, and a few free Black families) were fleeing what was quickly becoming a ghost town and economic backwater.
Part 2: I am a New Brunswicker… Sort of
When I first arrived in New Brunswick in 1998, I was baited here by a generous scholarship to conduct research combining Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, data visualization, and the Geology of meteorite impact structures. But to be honest, I was infatuated with the sea, and I had been for a long time. Like so many Black people, the ocean represented the masculine type of trade which seemed important to me in the years of youthful bravado. More importantly, a life at sea provided an economic freedom that young Black men from the country could rarely find anywhere else. Though I didn't know it then, I was following in the footsteps of so many of my people, like Henry Gwin who found freedom and refuge in the maritime trades. I was unwittingly caught in the same pattern of existence that had propelled my ancestors for over two centuries.
Two pivotal encounters acted as beacons to lead me from my life as a marine data scientist to my second career as a scholar of critical historical studies. First, I became heavily involved in marine archeology in the Western Mediterranean Sea with RPM Nautical Foundation. These surveys involved long hours of simultaneous sensations of monotony, and nerve-wracking anxiety keeping millions of dollars of equipment function while scouring the murky depths. Hours with little to do but monitor banks of computer screens, drink way too much coffee and contemplate scattered remnants left behind by ancient maritime catastrophes. The shattered aspirations of drowned mariners reaching across the gulf of time with every recovered artefact. Seeing millennia old versions of myself, nameless sailors' memories preserved in fragments opened my eyes to the continuity of the human experience. The dead don't get to tell their stories, but modern technology, and the retreat of Eurocentric thinking has unburdened the history-making process of some of the political, nationalist, and racial agendas of the not-so-distant past. Consequently, my curiosity about my own people and their history was awakened.
Second, I was invited to one of the late Skip Talbot's famous Elm Hill picnics. I arrived as a guest and left as family. As we collectively rattled off our family relations, common names began to overlap, and connections between the Black communities in Halifax and Saint John revealed themselves. My Grandfather and Great Grandfathers served in the Number 2 Construction Battalion, as did many other Nova Scotian and New Brunswick Black recruits in WW1 . Much has been made regarding the omission of these men, and their families from the chronicles of "The Great War". In my own research, I stumbled on an aside describing how the Number 2 tore up the railway ties of the Grand Trunk Railroad in Edmundston and Napadogan, to be sent to Europe to aid in the war effort. A sense of perversity insinuates itself at the idea of Black soldiers, preachers, scamps, entertainers and musicians descending on that tiny, isolated community, and the resulting mayhem of two worlds colliding. This is yet another tie connecting me to this place, inexorably shifting my identity with the weight of my ancestral legacy. I frequently pass through Napadogan on my way to prepare trails for Tomlinson Lake Hike to Freedom just outside Perth-Andover. I use the rutted winding back road, which is the significantly shorter route, which brings the rail line in Napadogan briefly in sight. I often stop where the road brushes against the banks of the Southwest Miramichi River, for, if you stand there at the right time, you'll hear the roar of the locomotive as it coaxes its freight, and the screeching axles of boxcars, in protest. I get the impression that like me, they have places to go, but would linger here for a little while longer. But I have a long day ahead of me at Tomlinson Lake, and my soft hands, a scholar's hands, are now unaccustomed to the labour demands required to prepare the trail for another year's band of travellers.
Though my ties to Tomlinson Lake only go back a decade or so, tethered by the memories of the first time that I heard Joe Gee's voice on the radio announcing the inaugural "Hike to Freedom". As I lay in bed listening, the fog of my sleepiness reluctantly thinned to allow what most closely resembles ambition for me, I concluded that, "At least one Black guy should probably be there", and I concluded to head "up there" with my family. Little did I know but that humble pilgrimage started a long-lasting friendship and fascination with the story of Tomlinson Lake and the Underground Railroad. The years following the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed the putrid grasp of Southern plantation owners to lasso free Black people in the North in a noose of legislation, reducing them into chattel. Many chose and uncertain future in Canada over the horror of a life back on the plantation. For those fugitives who eschewed the heavily surveilled coastal routes, the glimpse of Tomlinson Lake's shallow jade green waters represented the certainty of freedom, possibly for the first time in their lives. When our schedules align, Joe and I head out to the lake to make improvements and fantasize about what the site could develop into, placed conveniently as it is close to the Trans-Canada Highway, beckoning tourists and dreamers to stretch their legs in what is arguably one of the most captivating historic sites in the province. For now, our dreams are contained to the annual Hike to Freedom, held every October to celebrate this hidden jewel of Atlantic Canadian history.
Part 3. Bringing History out of the Ivory Tower
I once attended a lecture on Black slavery in the Maritimes at UNB presented by historian Harvey Amani Whitfield who mused about the role of the historian and he concluded that "you can be a historian, or you can be an activist." I think I managed to be both. My friend and colleague Bonnie Huskins first described my work as "methodological interventions" and I am sure I enthusiastically agreed. But to be honest, I didn't even know what that meant at the time, Simply put, I now know this is a critical approach to the voices you include in history and HOW they are included, using non-traditional methodologies, and forms of evidence. The land tells stories, and my research repopulates that land with Black voices, to geographically re-present the networks of Black individuals, families and communities therein. This approach benefits the subjects in two important ways: First, it creates a spatial framework for Black presence, and second, it behaves as a social intervention. Entwining these voices and spaces, narratively populates the land, like breadcrumbs along an evidentiary trail that we can follow, and build from, towards a more complete understanding of Black historical agency.
"The land tells stories, and my research repopulates that land with Black voices, to geographically re-present the networks of Black individuals, families and communities therein."
Part 4: Conclusion
This essay was intended to illustrate the interrelatedness between my own personal identity as a Black New Brunswicker, my awareness of the Black history in this province, my feelings of inclusion, and my growth as a Black scholar at UNB. Through the erasure of the past, and up until recently, the limited opportunities to learn, I, like many other Black Maritimers were left completely unaware. I cannot adequately describe how intellectual pique, and affect, gripped me as my eyes scanned along the map of the Negro Settlements in Nerepis, and stumbled across Henry Gwin's name. This sense of shock and wonderment occurred again when I discovered the name again, as one of the early settlers of what would become St. Stephen. Beyond the genealogical appeal, Gwin's presence in these places are to me, beacons to larger demographic patterns occurring in the mid-1780's demonstrating a level of Black mobility and agency that rarely gets discussed. Gwin's affiliation with the British military, and his historic trajectory, challenges the far too common tendency of historians to treat Black Loyalist society as a monolith. As of yet, we do not know what these subtleties in status meant beyond the famous story of Black New Brunswicker Thomas Peters, whose 1791 journey through the Black Atlantic, according to Canadian historian Afua Cooper, made him a pioneer of the Black power movement.
For those less interested in the esoteric details of New Brunswick's Black past, or who are not the descendants of the many faceless, and all too frequently nameless early Black arrivals, there is still an appreciation of the breadth of Black history in the region. My work to date has popularized many locations in the province with sites of interest, and has only scratched the surface. Mine is a modest attempt to build on the fine work of others, like David Peters, Ralph Thomas, Jennifer Dow, Mary Louise McCarthy, her son Thandiwe, and his accomplice Gary Weeks, as well as many others who take the time to preserve and call forth those once faceless, nameless voices, tirelessly sharing their work through community curation and exhibition, and miraculously finding funds to keep it all going. It is an honour to be associated with such a fine cast of characters.
If you want to know more, you can find several of my public history projects, including the Atlantic Canada's Hidden Histories online at: www.loyalist-connections-creative-society.com. I can also be contacted via the site should you have stories you want to tell.
