Upon arrival in Saint John in 1783, many Blacks were relegated to a class terms “servant”. No free, probably not fully enslaved, but “obligated” to work for a period of time in compensation for the cost of transport out of New York City, or from Nova Scotia to the mouth of the Saint John River.
The early years of the region were not easy ones, especially for Blacks. New Brunswick separated from Nova Scotia giving Tory slave owning Loyalist elites far more political power. They were not afraid to use it. The Governor backed the Tory faction in overturning the first set of elections and then essentially outlawed petitioning the government and persecuted those with more republican ideologies with the threat of sedition.
Peter Cox found himself spending a great deal of time in Saint John’s Lower Cove mingling with what the government would consider “troublemakers”. Perhaps with the aid of some of these white allies, Cox and a number of other Blacks fled enslavement in early 1784 as noted by Thomas Roger’s fugitive slave ad. Cox had a certificate of freedom, and therefore was a free man. We cannot know the arrangement Cox and Roger’s had made, but it is clear that Cox felt that agreement had been fulfilled and so did the government apparently.
The 1785 Charter Saint John essentially stripped Blacks of the privilege of living in the city, or fishing in the surrounding waters and similar to other Loyalist settlements with large Black populations, it outlawed meeting in large numbers. It should not be surprising to see so many Black Loyalist land petitions erupting in 1785 with the displacement of Blacks from the city. Cox was part of this migration and next appears in the land petition for a Black settlement on at Milkish. Peter Cox and Milkish is only one of many intersecting stories now receiving increasing interest by historians.
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