Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 31–35. Rosemary Sadlier
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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:
Resolved, That in this glorious land of Freedom, and under this equitable and powerful Government, man is man, without respect to the colour of his skin, and that we, as men, will not submit to degrading terms of service, nor see our brethren treated with indignity by public conveyances, or excluded therefrom, without showing a manly spirit of resentment. Resolved, That, as waiters, at the public hotels, of St. Catharines, we will not continue in the service of our present employers, unless, in the management of their conveyances, they henceforth treat ourselves and our people with the respect and civility, to which we are entitled, as men. With this expression of affirmation and solidarity and with the support of influential members of the community also threatening to boycott these establishments, the hotels changed their policies.
The building of the Welland House provided jobs for black people in the 1800s. The Welland House and the other spa hotels connected to natural hot water springs or therapeutic waters — such as The Springbank or the Stephenson House — developed around the local salt springs which were thought to have healing powers. Affluent people from around the world were attracted by these springs, especially the United States, and they flocked to St. Catharines for rest and relaxation. Guests of the spas included Mary Todd Lincoln (the widow of Abraham Lincoln), the aunt of Robert E. Lee, various spies, and tourists from the American South who travelled with their enslaved black staff. Because the white guests from the south expected the black people in St. Catharines should be subservient but they were not, the guests forced the hotel owners to exclude black people from equal access to the hotels, giving rise to racial conflict. Today the spas are closed and only the structure of the Welland House remains.
Anthony Burns became a resident of St. Catharines after an arduous course of events and likely was convinced that Canada was indeed the Promised Land.
Born a slave in Virginia on May 31, 1834, Burns was owned by Colonel Charles Suttle. Suttle hired him out to work for others, and Burns was able to escape — finally ending up in Boston. On May 24, 1854, he was arrested in Boston under the terms of the Fugitive Slave Act. Following a town meeting in support of Burns, there was a riot in which several people were injured and one was killed. Burns was put on trial on June 2, and it was ruled that he had to be sent back to Colonel Suttle. Because of the anger of the citizens of Boston, Burns was escorted out of the city by twenty-two state militia to prevent any crowd violence. Over 50,000 people lined the street to protest the decision and witness his transfer back to Suttle.
Burns was returned to Virginia where he was severely beaten and confined to a cage for months by Suttle. He was later sold to a plantation in North Carolina. Finally members of the Boston church he had attended purchased him and a matron financed his education at Oberlin College in Ohio as a student of religious studies. By 1860, Burns had moved to St. Catharines, serving as the pastor of Zion Baptist Church on Geneva Street. He died on July 27, 1862, at the age of twenty-eight, and was buried at Victoria Lawn Cemetery in St. Catharines. His courage and dedication have been commemorated with a plaque