I do have sufficient evidence to prove that I, my mom, and my children are descendants of the Queen’s Bush community. The documentary trail from my grandmother back through my Robinson ancestors (Myrtle Mae to William A. to John A.) to Peter Taylor and Margaret White is solid.

The question of whether we are descendants of escaped slaves are free Blacks is harder to answer, however. The answer could be one or both. Nevertheless, given that all my earliest known ancestors residing in Queen’s Bush hailed from slave-owning states, namely Maryland and Virginia, the evidence points more strongly in the direction that we are living legacies of slaves who struggled to obtain freedom despite the cost.

I believe there is evidence that I descend from known escaped slaves. Peter Taylor and Margaret White lived near Samuel White and Hannah (Gray) White. According to Brown-Kubisch (2004), Samuel White (at least) was born into slavery in Maryland. Given data from three successive censuses of Canada (1851, 1861, and 1871)—all of which agree that Samuel White was born in Maryland—his birth date ranges from about 1786 to about 1794. (Keep in mind that the accuracy of census data depends on the memory of the individual respondent.)

Brown-Kubisch reported that Hannah Gray was born in Maryland as well, but given the three aforementioned censuses of Canada, we cannot be so sure. The 1851 Census indicates Maryland, the 1861 Census says merely “U.S.”, and the 1871 Census says Virginia. Her birth year ranges from about 1788 to about 1802, depending on which census one goes by.

The two oldest children still living with them at the time of the 1851 Census, Henry (born circa 1828) and Sarah (born circa 1833), were both listed as born in Virginia. The family had arrived in Canada by 1834 as another child, David, was born that year in Canada. The 1851 Census listed another son, Jacob, born in Canada about 1836. By 1861 they appear to have two more children, Elizabeth and Frederick White, both born circa 1844, and possibly a grandson, Charles Smith, who was born about 1854.

Brown-Kubisch (2004) made no mention of my great-great-great-grandmother Margaret White, thus does not make any connection between her and Samuel White and Hannah (Gray) White. It is no surprise, because she appears to infer the family relationships mentioned solely from household data in the 1851 and 1861 censuses.

But I do believe there is evidence contained within the census data. Samuel White and Hannah (Gray) White lived near Peter Taylor and Margaret (White) Taylor in Peel Township according to the 1851 Census. Samuel White and his family are listed on page 37. Peter Taylor and his family are listed on page 38, the third or fourth household (depending on whether or not Lucinda Ross is part of Cornelius Taylor’s household (or vice versa) from Samuel White’s.

The two families are listed together on page 21 of the 1861 Census. By then, only one other household—that of David and Sarah Austin (the handwriting looks like Austin, at least)—separated them. It may be that Sarah Austin is actually Sarah White, Samuel and Hannah (Gray) White’s daughter, as David Austin is listed as a labourer, as are Samuel and Hannah’s sons, Jacob and Henry. Thus, it is possible that the White and Austin households are one, in which case they live adjacent to Peter and Margaret (White) Taylor.

In either case, I believe the reduced number of households between the White and Taylor families between 1851 and 1861 reflect the beginning of the exodus of squatters from Queen’s Bush. Both the White and Taylor families left Queen’s Bush later in the 1860s. Brown-Kubisch (2004) reports that Samuel White sold his farm to a John Fenton.

What is irrefutable, however, is that Samuel and Hannah (Gray) White lived next to Peter and Margaret (White) Taylor after those two families left Queen’s Bush. In the 1871 Census of Amabel Township in Bruce North district, Samuel and Hannah lived next to Peter and Margaret. They are listed on the same page, with Samuel and Hannah, now quite elderly, living in household No. 73 and Peter and Margaret in household No. 74.

Other evidence to a potential relationship is that some names repeat among both families. Peter and Margaret have a son named Samuel. Samuel and Hannah have a son named David, as do Peter and Margaret. Samuel and Hannah have a son named Henry. Peter and Margaret have a son named James Henry. Peter and Margaret have a son named Albert, as does Margaret’s brother Samuel (assuming my hypothesis is correct that they are siblings).

So sure, while my assertion that Margaret White is the daughter of Samuel White and Hannah Gray is conjecture, it is conjecture backed by a good bit of consistent evidence over at least a 20-year period.

—

I have heard of many African Americans today being ashamed of the fact that their ancestors had once been held in bondage. It is a sentiment I cannot understand. None of our ancestors volunteered to be treated as property.

Nevertheless, I feel a bit of pride in having a personal connection to that dark period of history, that I descend from those who bucked that vile system and risked their lives in a very personal fight and flight for freedom.

Bibiliography

Brown-Kubisch, Linda. 2004. The Queen’s Bush Settlement: Black Pioneers 1839-1865. Toronto: Natural Heritage Books.

Cooke, William. 2015. “The Queen’s Bush Settlement.” Stalking Dead People (blog), William Cooke. 27 Nov 2022. http://stalkingdeadpeople.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-queens-bush-settlement.html.

Drew, Benjamin. 1856. The Refugee: Or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Boston: John P. Jewett.

Ontario Heritage Trust. 2008. “The Queen’s Bush Settlement, 1820-1867.” King’s Printer for Ontario. Last Modified 2 Aug 2008. Accessed 27 Nov 2022.

https://www.heritagetrust.on.ca/pages/programs/provincial-plaque-program/provincial-plaque-background-papers/queens-bush-settlement.

Pavlakos, Raphaela. 2021. “The Forgotten History of Wellington County: Queen’s Bush Settlers and their Legacies.” The Black Past in Guelph: Remembered and Reclaimed (blog), University of Guelph. 27 Nov 2022. https://blackpastinguelph.com/2021/02/15/the-forgotten-history-of-wellington-county-queens-bush-settlers-and-their-legacies/.

Siebert, Wilbur H. 1898. The Underground Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom. New York: MacMillan Company.

“In some other parts of Canada the same tendency to spread into the outlying districts and secure small holdings appeared among the colored people. Mr. Peter Wright, the reeve of the town of Colchester, noted this fact, and attributed the clearance of much land for cultivation to fugitive slaves. That such land did not always remain in the possession of this class of pioneers was due to their ignorance of the forms of conveyancing, and doubtless sometimes to the sharp practices of unscrupulous whites.”

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (DML) — The settlers of the Queens Bush, both Black and white, were caught in a catch 22. As squatters, they had no right to the land. They could not obtain rights to the land because it was not yet surveyed and not yet for sale. But they needed to survive and did what they had to do—clear the forest and begin farming what they could.

The problem for them was, by clearing the land and establishing farms, they increased the value of the property once it was surveyed and made available for sale. Many of them foresaw the looming problem, and they petitioned Canadian officials for help—not so much for favor or mercy, but merely for recognition of the value of what we would now call “sweat equity” they had put in, of the value (monetary and otherwise) they had created by their efforts.

“We are aware that an apology for our boldness of squatting into the Queens Bush the way we have done, should be reasonably looked for. We would therefore beg leave to state to you that we are most of us, Emigrants, who came to this country without the means of buying land, either cultivated or wild, — and that we had therefore no means of making a living except as Day Labourers, which is by the way no very easy way of getting a living; but to which we would have still cheerfully submitted, could we have got places to live with our families and constant employment, but we could get neither one nor the other. . . . Taking these things into consideration, we thought it would be best for ourselves and Families, if we would go into the woods and cultivate that soil, which we saw that was at any rate, as long as it was unsettled of no more use than being a rendezvous of the wolf and the Bear, — contemplating at the same time, once to buy the land we have taken in possession, should it be sold upon such conditions that we could buy it and we are sincerely glad that there is a prospect of its being surveyed out.”

From the Queen’s Bush settlers petition to James Durand, MP, 1842; reprinted in Appendix 2 of Brown-Kubisch 2004

The 1842 petition led to no resolution. The settlers followed up with a petition to Charles Metcalfe, Governor General of the Province of Canada, in 1843 in which they pleaded for grants of land; and again to Governor General James Bruce, Lord Elgin, in 1847 requesting favorable payment terms once the land does come up for sale.

“That your pettrs (petitioners) has settled on these lands for many years and under Every difficulty has mad Improvements on the lots of land that your pettrs hav taken up by making roads fencing and Cultivating these land Your pettrs Having no Capital to Comence with makes your pettrs not able to purchase these lands Except that Your pettrs is granted time to pay it by instalments which Your pettrs will do if allowed to pay the same and we earnestly intreat your Excellency favour to grant your pettrs this their Humble request for if your pettrs is driven from our little Homes our distress will be great not knowing what to do. Many of your pettrs hav large families to suport and no means of suporting them if your pettrs Hs to leave these lands that vour pettrs Has settled upon . . .”

From the Queen’s Bush settlers petition to Governor General Lord Elgin, 1847; reprinted in Appendix 2 of Brown-Kubisch 2004

A small group again petitioned Lord Elgin in 1850. The result was the same: nothing. The lands were surveyed, with surveyors having little regard for existing homesteads—even to the point of drawing boundary lines right through dwellings in which families lived. The work many of the Queen’s Bush settlers had put in to create a new home from wilderness amounted to nothing when others stood to benefit from their labors.

“The surveying of the tract called Queen’s Bush, and the subsequent arranging of the terms of payment for land already occupied, caused a number of colored settlers to sell their clearings in ‘the Bush’ and move away. Some of these, it appears, went south to Buxton, but some went north to the shores of Georgian Bay and located at Owen Sound. From this testimony it is certain that by 1850 fugitive slaves had found their way in considerable numbers throughout the inter-lake portion of Canada West.”

Siebert 1898, 218-219

—

My ancestors were among those who were eventually forced to leave Queen’s Bush. They were still there in 1861, Peter Taylor and Margaret White and their family (including my great-great-great-grandmother, Harriet Ann Taylor) still lived on their farm in the settlement. The Taylor family lived not far from a John Little, who may or may not be the intrepid John Little interviewed by Drew (1856). (There was another escaped slave named John Little in Queen’s Bush.)

Shortly after the time of the 1861 Census of Canada, my great-great-great-grandfather John A. Robinson met and married Harriet Ann Taylor in Canada. Their first child, my great-great-grandfather William A. Robinson, was born in Canada in June 1863. Their young family had relocated to Pittsfield, Michigan, by 1870.

By 1871, Peter Taylor and Margaret White had moved to Amabel Township, Bruce County, Ontario. Amabel is near the Owen Sound area where many former Queen’s Bush residents moved. They weren’t there for long. By 1880, Peter Taylor, Margaret White and the rest of their children had relocated to Michigan where John Robinson and Harriett Ann Taylor had moved a decade earlier.

Peter Taylor and Margaret White have left quite a few descendants that have spread across the United States. But all of them struggled to find a sense of home here. Some of their grandchildren—including some of the children of John and Harriet Ann (Taylor) Robinson—were able to pass as white and did, as I have found in a number of Census records. (My great-grandmother was clearly not the first to be evasive about her past.) Others, like my great-great-grandfather William Robinson, did not have that option. They were too dark-skinned to be other than Black.

References

Brown-Kubisch, Linda. 2004. The Queen’s Bush Settlement: Black Pioneers 1839-1865. Toronto: Natural Heritage Books.

Drew, Benjamin. 1856. The Refugee: Or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Boston: John P. Jewett.

Siebert, Wilbur H. 1898. The Underground Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom. New York: MacMillan Company.

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (DML) — The woman on the left is my grandmother, Yut-Seul Yee (or Yee Yut-Seul in proper Chinese naming order). The woman on the right is my great-grandmother, Myrtle Mae Robinson Yee (or Jackson or something else). My great-grandmother tended to be guarded about her origins.

Actually, she outright lied about them. Sometimes the reason was understandable, such as to get around anti-miscegenation laws in effect at the time that she remarried after my great-grandfather Yee Jock Leong’s death. Other times, I’m not sure why—maybe because of some unnecessary shame over the fact that she descended from former slaves.

My great-grandmother was born Myrtle Mae Robinson. My mom was always under the impression that my great-grandmother was half-Chinese and half-Spanish. According to my mother’s “Statement of Personal History” from the time of her enlistment in the U.S. Air Force, my mom listed Myrtle’s birth details as 5 Apr 1894 in Santa Barbara, California. We have a vague Bible record to back that up.

But that past was a fiction created by my great-grandmother. I cannot say with certainty why she was so secretive about her past. I am sure some of her motivation stemmed from the daily racism she encountered in American life. She did pass herself off as white, for example, in order to remarry an Irishman in Indiana after my great-grandfather, Yee Jock Leong (1883-1936) died. She and my great-grandfather (who was persecuted by the federal government as a result of the Chinese Exclusion Acts) faced a racist backlash from his Chinese family when their relationship began. So it may make sense that, after my great-grandfather’s death, my great-grandmother tried to rewrite our—or at least her—family history.

If she was embarrassed by her history, she need not have been. It is one thing to dissemble to get around laws that had no business being on the books, but as for the rest . . . well, slavery wasn’t a choice.

The fact is that African Americans did not submit to slavery. They resisted in many ways. They often intentionally worked slowly and inefficiently, sometimes they sabotaged their owner’s crops and property. They planned or participated in what was largely unsuccessful revolts. The most effective resistance option, yet one fraught with danger, was escape to freedom. In the years before the Civil War, many escaped.

The Underground Railroad was a conduit for escaped slaves to flee to freedom in Canada, a British dominion where slavery had been outlawed. Canada was an ideal location for escaped slaves to flee to, as it was under no obligation to return escaped slaves back to the United States, whereas escaped slaves (and free blacks) in the U.S. were under constant fear of being “arrested” and returned to (or kidnapped into as in the case of Solomon Northrup) bondage under the Fugitive Slave Law.

—

My great-grandmother’s cover story began to unravel because of a family mystery that I was damned determined to solve.

My mom never knew who her father was, and my grandmother died with the secret. In the 1980s, I was sent to Cincinnati, Ohio, for some USEPA training as part of my job. Given that my mom was born in nearby Dayton, I went there to see if I could find her birth certificate. I found nothing for my mom, therefore found no solution to the mystery I started with.

I did find birth records for my grandmother and birth and death records for her two siblings (both of whom died in infancy). The family physician, an A.A. Smith, consistently listed my great-grandmother’s race as “Negro” or “Colored.”

Initially, I dismissed the notations. My great-grandmother had something of the look of a Filipina—which would fit the story my mother believed of her being half Chinese/half Spanish—and with the darker skin it could have been an honest mistake on the doctor’s part. My dismissal of his identification changed when I (trained as a biologist) started investigating genetic ancestry. I encouraged my mom to take it up, too. We found that we both have African American ancestry.

Smith, the family doctor, actually knew what he was talking about.

As I began searching for more records of my great-grandmother’s ancestry, I started finding plenty of records for a Myrtle Mae Robinson in Ann Arbor. Add to that the fact that we discovered in my grandmother’s scrapbooks a lot of material showing that my great-grandmother grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and it is easy to infer that something did not add up with my great-grandmother’s self-professed backstory.

Myrtle Mae Robinson’s parents, according to the 1900 U.S. Census (above), were William A. and Hannah Robinson. Hannah Robinson was named Hannah Marie Woods at the time of her marriage to William Robinson in Ann Arbor on Nov. 20,1890. She was listed in the 1900 U.S. Census as Black. Her death certificate (May 30, 1908) said she was born in Kentucky on Aug. 4, 1862, and that her parents were Calace Taylor and Catherine Cox. Hannah’s trail to the past ends with the names of her parents and her origins in Kentucky.

William A. Robinson (1863-1937) is another matter. He frequently appears in the U.S. Census from Michigan (1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930; much of the 1890 U.S. Census was destroyed in a fire). His home still exists in Ann Arbor (at least it did the last time I looked at the image on Google Maps). He is consistently listed as Black and that he was born in Canada. His parents were John A. Robinson (ca. 1836-after 1910) and Harriet Ann Taylor (ca. 1847-1898).

All the U.S. Census records in which John A. Robinson is named (1870, 1880, 1900, 1910) list his birthplace as Virginia and his race as Black. The birthplace of his parents is variously listed as Kentucky (1880), Virginia (1900), or Africa (1910).

As yet, I have found no records of John Robinson’s sojourn in Canada in that nation’s records, but I know that he lived there before returning to the United States after the Civil War. Several of his children were born there: in addition to my great-great grandfather, William, my great-great-great-uncles James H. (ca. 1865) and John W. (1869) and my great-great-great-aunt Elzina (1867) were born in Canada. His wife, Harriet Ann Taylor, was also born in Canada.

By 1870, John Robinson, Harriet Taylor, and their children William A., James H., Elzina, and John W. resided in Pittsfield, Michigan.

Harriet Ann Taylor is listed in the 1861 Canadian Census as living with her parents, Peter Taylor (ca. 1814-1880) and Margaret White (ca. 1828-1888), in Peel Township in southern Ontario near the modern cities of Kitchener and Guelph. She is listed as Black in the 1861 Census of Canada and in the 1870 and 1880 U.S. Census.

Peter Taylor is listed as a farmer in the 1851 Census of Canada for Peel Township and living with his wife, Margaret, his daughter Harriet; son Samuel; and daughter Janie (probably Margaret J.). His birthplace is variously listed as Maryland or Virginia. His birth year ranges from 1811 to 1815, depending on the source. The 1861 Census of Canada lists three additional children: David, Frances, and James. The 1871 Census of Canada revealed an additional child, Albert.

Margaret White’s birthdate is harder to pin down, ranging from 1821 to 1831, depending on the source consulted. Her birthplace, like Peter Taylor’s, is given as either Maryland or Virginia.

By 1880 their family was living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. According to the 1880 U.S. Census, Peter Taylor’s and Margaret White’s parents were born in Virginia. The family’s religion is listed in Canadian Census data as Western Methodist (1851), Episcopal Methodist (1861), or Methodist (1871). This may prove relevant later.

This leaves me with (at least) three confirmed African American ancestors who were born in the United States and who were living in Canada before or during the Civil War:

• My great-great-great-grandfather John A. Robinson,
• My great-great-great-great-grandfather Peter Taylor,
• My great-great-great-great-grandmother Margaret White.

From the time I discovered the Canadian Connections, I suspected my ancestors had taken the Underground Railroad to freedom. But I had little evidence to back it up until I learned more about their community in Peel Township, Wellington County, Ontario. That community was commonly called Queen’s Bush.