Emancipation Day – Ontario Black History mini-tour

British Methodist Episcopal Church, Salem Chapel, was built in 1820 by African-American freedom seekers.  When escaped-slave-turned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman arrived in St Catharines in 1851 it became her church. Over the course of 19 trips back to Maryland via the network of abolitionists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad, Tubman conducted around 300 people to freedom in Canada.  It was designated a National Historic Site in 2000.

Home of Josiah Henson, a Maryland-based slave who escaped to Canada in 1830 and helped found the British American Institute, a skills training school for other escaped slaves, and the Dawn Settlement, a community with farms, sawmill, gristmill, brickyard, on the banks of the Sydenham River.  Henson’s autobiography inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe’s bestselling novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Founded in 1849 by abolitionist Rev. William King, this Black settlement – renowned for its superior educational system – became a self-sufficient, model, community for approximately 2,000 people.

After the Civil War, many Black residents returned to the United States, but many remained and their descendants are the current inhabitants of Buxton.

This wheelchair-accessible museum complex features three rooms of exhibits, a library and research centre, gift shop, an 1861 schoolhouse, an 1852 log cabin, a replica of the Buxton Liberty Bell, commemorative National Historic Site plaques, a large picnic and playground area and plenty of parking for cars and buses.

There were about 600 Blacks living in and around Amherstburg when the African Methodist Episcopal congregation was founded in 1826.  In 1848, former slaves went to work by hand to build the fine fieldstone chapel which today houses the Amherstburg Freedom Museum. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1999. the first Black History site in Canada.