“This name (Queen’s Bush) was originally given to a large, unsurveyed tract of land, now comprising the townships of Peel and Wellesley, and the country extending thence to Lake Huron. While it was yet a wilderness, it was settled mainly by colored people, about the year 1846.”

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (DML) — African American emigration to Canada increased after Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 went into effect in Canada on Aug. 1, 1834—a day now commemorated as Emancipation Day in Canada—thereby establishing a safe haven for escaped slaves and free blacks from south of the Canadian border. The passage in the United States of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 further inspired emigration. As they arrived, these escaped slaves and free blacks established a number of communities across southern Ontario. Among those communities was one referred to as Queen’s Bush.

Early in the nineteenth century, Queen’s Bush was largely a wilderness stretching from what is now Peel and Wellesley Townships (northwest of Waterloo and Guelph) in southern Ontario westward to Lake Huron. Much of the land was owned by the Crown (Queen Victoria of England) and set aside as clergy reserve, i.e., land held in reserve for the support of Church of England clergy. But as more settlers moved to Canada and needed land, plans changed. Some of the land would be sold—but only after it was surveyed, and it was taking decades to get the land surveyed.

Because the land was not-yet surveyed and, as a result, could not be purchased when they initially settled there, many settlers squatted on the land and began clearing it for farms in the hopes that they would eventually be able to buy the land after the required surveys had been carried out. They greatly improved the land’s value through their efforts (Siebert 1898).

Peel Township, in Wellington County, Western Canada (now Ontario), was part of that unsurveyed region when African Americans (both escaped slaves and free blacks) established the Queen’s Bush settlement there (Pavlakos 2021). They found much hardship, but with the potential for creating their own paradise where they and their families could be free.

“The fact that there were large tracts of good land in the portion of Canada accessible to the fugitive was a fortunate circumstance, for the desire to possess and cultivate their own land was wide-spread among the escaped slaves. This eagerness drew many of them into the Canadian wilderness, there to cut out little farms for themselves, and live the life of pioneers. The extensive tract known as the Queen’s Bush, lying southwest of Toronto and stretching away to Lake Huron, was early penetrated by refugees.”

Siebert 1898, 204

More and more slaves and free blacks began moving into the area in the 1840s.

“By 1846 the more distant interior was invaded. In that year the long strip of country stretching from the western extremity of Lake Ontario across to Lake Huron, and designated on the general map as Queen’s Bush, was entered by pioneers who had escaped from slavery. This region was not surveyed until about 1848, and by that time there were as many as fifty families located there. Some time during the years 1845 to 1847, the Rev. R. S. W. Sorrick went as far north as Oro, where he found ‘some fifty persons settled, many comfortable and doing well, but many [suffering] a great deal from poverty.’ ”

Siebert 1898, 218

“My father and myself went to the Queen’s Bush in 1846. We went four and a half miles beyond the other farms, to Canestogo, where he cleared up and had a farm; for years scarcely any white people came in, but fugitive slaves came in, in great numbers, and cleared the land. Before it was surveyed, there were as many as fifty families. … Some colored people have come in from the free States, on account of the fugitive slave bill, and bought land.”

William Jackson of Queen’s Bush, as quoted in Drew 1856, 189-190

John Little was a legend among the escaped slaves in the Queen’s Bush settlement. He escaped several times from his owners. He paid dearly for each attempt, but he never gave up. After his wife was sold away from him, he escaped again, reunited with his wife, Eliza, and they made a harrowing trek north to Canada. At one point, he missed getting caught by a slave patrol by mere yards. They found freedom in Canada, but no paradise.

“. . . We heard of the Queen’s Bush, where any people might go and settle, colored or poor, and might have a reasonable chance to pay for the land. We set out to find the Queen’s Bush—went to Buffalo—thence to Black Rock—thence to St. Catharines, and there I got straight instructions. We had not a second suit of clothes apiece; we had one bedquilt and one blanket, and eighteen dollars in money. I bought two axes in Hamilton, one for myself, and one for my wife; half a dozen plates, knives and forks, an iron pot, and a Dutch oven: that’s all for tools and furniture. For provisions I bought fifty weight of flour, and twenty pounds of pork. Then we marched right into the wilderness, where there were thousands of acres of woods which the chain had never run round since Adam. At night we made a fire, and cut down a tree, and put up some slats like a wigwam. This was in February, when the snow was two feet deep. It was about fourteen years ago. We made our bed of cedar boughs from a swamp. Thus we travelled three or four days, seeing plenty of deer: wolves, as plenty as sheep are now, were howling about us, and bears were numerous.”

John Little of Queen’s Bush, as quoted in Drew 1856, 216

As hard as it was, John Little put his defiance to good use.

“As it is so often said by slaveholders, that if the ‘niggers’ were free, and put in a place where they would be together they would starve to death, I wanted to show to the contrary. I have one hundred and fifty acres of land: one hundred and ten of it cleared, and under good cultivation: two span of horses, a yoke of oxen, ten milch cows and young cattle, twenty head of hogs, forty head of sheep; I have two wagons, two ploughs, and two drags. . . .”

John Little of Queen’s Bush, as quoted in Drew 1856, 218

Little’s target audience wasn’t just the whites who assumed African Americans were inferior, it was also free blacks who worked in subservient roles elsewhere:

“I would like to show it to those stout, able men, who, while they might be independent here, remain in the towns as waiters, blacking boots, cleaning houses, and driving coaches for men, who scarcely allow them enough for a living. To them I say, go into the backwoods of Queen Victoria’s dominions, and you can secure an independent support. I am the man who has proved it; never man came into an unsettled country with lesser means to begin with. . . . Some say, you cannot live in the woods without a year’s provisions,—but this is not so: I have come here and proved to the contrary. I have hired myself out two days to get things to work on at home one. If there is a man in the free States who says the colored people cannot take care of themselves, I want him to come here and see John Little.”

John Little of Queen’s Bush, as quoted in Drew 1856, 218-219

The escaped slaves and free blacks to entered the wilderness of the Queen’s Bush and began to clear it greatly increased the land’s value. They made the land livable and profitable, but in the end far too many paid dearly for their efforts.

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.

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.

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.