The first years of settlement in the region found Saint John’s free Blacks living in a segregated community outside of the city in Carleton. This land proved to be insufficient for subsistence for the Black families.
Richard, or Corankapone Wheeler as the company captain petitioned the government for land. Wheeler’s Company relocated to grants close to this location. Wheeler communicated with the government that many of the Black settlers found the land unsuitable for homesteading and drifted into other communities to pick up wage labour. Challenged not only by the quality of the land, the local magistrate, and slave holding elite, Major Coffin, insisted that the land was not actually granted to the Black Loyalists, but only leased by certificates of occupation. It was a tenuous existence.
Here the story merges with that of Thomas Peters and the Black Pioneers who were originally settled in and around Annapolis Royal, but who wished to relocated to New Brunswick due to abuses in their original settlement.
By 1790, the combined Black community had had enough and money was collected for Peters to travel to England to petition Parliament directly. Jonathan Clackson, the brother of famous British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson would travel to America and document the abuses and collect names for transportation to the British colony of Sierra Leone. 1192 Black men, women and children would depart North America, never to return.
