The Queen's Bush Settlement

African British Methodist Episcopal Cemetery, Peel, Wellington, Ontario

At the side of a gravel road northwest of Elmira, Ontario sits a row of weathered and broken gravestones. This cemetery has suffered not only from the ravishes of time and vandalism, but also from misguided attempts to repair the stones. While similar to many other small cemeteries in Southern Ontario, the African British Methodist Episcopal Cemetery is unique in that it is all that remains of the Queen's Bush Settlement, once the largest Black settlement in Canada West (Ontario), and the first to which fugitive slaves from the United States migrated in large numbers.

In the early 19th century the unsettled area between Guelph and Lake Huron was known as the "Queen's Bush." Starting about 1820, hundreds of free and formerly enslaved Blacks established farms near the Conestoga River in an area which eventually became the southwestern part of Peel Township in Wellington County.

John Little, who settled in the area in 1842, described his experience:

Then we marched right into the wilderness, where there were thousands of acres of woods which the chain had never run around since Adam. At night we made a fire, and cut down a tree, and put up slats like a wigwam. This was in February, when the snow was two feet deep.

Families who had recently fled slavery fared the worst for they had no resources to purchase even the simplest tools, and hunger was their constant companion. Black settlers often had to borrow farms implements, or work for more affluent white settlers to the south.

Thomas Smallwood, a Black abolitionist who visited in 1843, wrote:

They had to go fifteen miles out into the settlements, and there work for the farmers, a fortnight, to get provision sufficient to enable them to work one week in clearing their own land. And, while I was there, they were making their three meals a day on potatoes and salt.

Even clothing was in short supply. Reverend Melville Denslow of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, wrote:

There is a great destitution of clothing among these new settlers. Some of the children are naked — others with a shirt or pair of pantaloons, may be frequently seen. Bedding is very scarce, but the free use of wood serves in a measure as a substitute.

Despite these hardships a vibrant settlement developed with four churches and two schools. The children were taught by American abolitionist missionaries, who were also involved in the solicitation and distribution of clothing to new arrivals. 

The "Colored" Church: Source: Wellington County Museum and Archives

The Queen's Bush Settlement only lasted a few years. Because Peel Township was not surveyed until 1843, the land was not available for purchase. Black settlers squatted as did many white families. In 1848 the settlers were given the opportunity to purchase their land, however, most lacked the resources to do so. As a result, many abandoned their farms. A few families, however, were able to stay.

Rev. Samuel Brown
1795-1881

One of several denominations active in the Queen’s Bush was the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), first organized in Philadelphia in 1816. In 1844 Reverend Samuel H. Brown of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) was assigned to the Queen's Bush, and settled on Lot 16, Concession 4 in Peel Township. The AME was first organized in Philadelphia in 1816. In 1856 the Canadian congregations amicably split from the AME and became the British Methodist Episcopal Church (BME).

Born in Maryland about 1795, Reverend Brown was an inspiring preacher and a leader in the AME and later the BME. A church was erected on his farm and a cemetery was established in the churchyard. In 1862, his church boasted 165 members and 65 children in Sunday School. Reverend Brown formally transferred the land to BME Church in 1877. Services at the BME church continued until about 1918. The last burial occurred in 1924, and the church building was removed in 1934. 

Priscilla Brown
1786-1853

Reverend Brown died in 1881. His gravestone is in three pieces, however, at some point a misguided attempt was made to repair the stone by bolting the three pieces to steel bars. Also in several pieces is the gravestone of his first wife, Priscilla, who died in 1853 at the age of 67, and his second wife, Ellen, who died in 1887 at the age of 74.

It is unfortunate that so many of the stones at the African British Methodist Episcopal Cemetery have been badly damaged. A 1979 transcription records at least two gravestones for former slaves: Jacob Steward and Vincent Douglass.

While only a fragment of Vincent Douglass's gravestone remains, that of his youngest son Albert is intact. Vincent Douglass was born into slavery in Virginia about 1798 but had been able to purchase his own freedom. In 1839, Vincent offered Joseph Mead of London County, Virginia, $2000 for Vincent's wife Martha, also known as Patty or Patsy, and her six children, five of whom had been fathered by Vincent. When Mead refused, Martha and the children were "carried off" by Vincent. Despite a $700 reward, they escaped to Canada and settled in the Queen's Bush in what is now Wellesley Township.

Vincent and Martha's youngest child, Albert, was born in Wellesley in 1845 but after the death of his father in 1877 relocated to Lot 14 Concession 2 in Peel Township. Albert and his wife Mary Ann Lee had at least 12 children, one of whom, Oscar Raymond Douglas served with the 5th Canadian Railway Troops in France during World War One. Martha Douglass survived her husband by 20 years and may have been over 100 when she died in 1897.

Mary Ann Steward
1816-1886

Jacob Steward was likely born into slavery in Maryland. In 1847 he married Mary Ann Knox, a Quaker who had been born in Philadelphia. Mary Ann may have been the sister of Thomas Elwood Knox, a free black from Pennsylvania whose account of coming to Canada in 1844 was included in Benjamin Drew's 1856 A North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada.

Jacob's Steward's broken gravestone is now almost unreadable, while that of his wife is marred by two rusty steel bars bolted to the front. Census data suggests that Jacob and Mary Ann were at least twenty years younger than their death registrations and gravestones indicate.

The gravestones of two children of William Lawson (1843-1899) are also intact. William was the son of Dangerfield Lawson (1806-1861) a fugitive slave who was born in Virginia. According to family tradition, Dangerfield absconded with one of his owner's horses and wagon. Dangerfield was overtaken by his owner, but when the owner tried to flog him, he was overpowered by Dangerfield and strangled to death with his own whip.

By 1848, the Queen's Bush Settlement was home to perhaps as many as 1500 free blacks and fugitive slaves. Four years later, however, this number had dropped dramatically. The 1852 Census records 192 black residents in Peel Township and 45 in neighbouring Wellesley Township.

Despite it's importance to African Canadian history, the story of the Queen's Bush Settlement was largely unknown until the 2004 publication of Linda Brown-Kubisch's book on the subject. But while the cover of her book shows a pioneer cemetery, it is not the African British Methodist Episcopal Cemetery, but the nearby Olivet Cemetery, established in the late 1850s by English and Scottish immigrants.

Sources:

British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention. London: John Snow, 1843.

Brown-Kubisch, Linda. "The Black Experience in the Queen's Bush Settlement". Ontario History. Ontario Historical Society. Vol 78 (1996) pp. 103–108.

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

Drew, Benjamin. A North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Boston: J.P. Jewett and Company, 1856. https://archive.org/details/northsideviewofs00drew/

"The Queen's Bush Settlement, 1820-1867." https://web.archive.org/web/20161020162043/http://www.heritagetrust.on.ca/CMSImages/3a/3a92b73d-a359-42e9-ba17-360d676d1eb1.pdf

Mountjoy, Max, ed. 1999. Portraits of Peel: Attiwandaronk to Mapleton. Peel History Committee.