The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto!

by Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooper, Karolyn Smardz Frost

Overview

"The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! stands out as an engaging and highly readable account of the lives of Black people in Toronto in the 1800s. Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooper and Karolyn Smardz Frost offer many helpful points of entry for readers learning for the first time about Black history in Canada. They also give surprising and detailed information to enrich the understanding of people already passionate about this neglected aspect of our own past."
- Lawrence Hill, Writer

The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto!, a richly illustrated book, examines the urban connection of the clandestine system of secret routes, safe houses and "conductors." Not only does it trace the story of the Underground Railroad itself and how people courageously made the trip north to Canada and freedom, but it also explores what happened to them after they arrived. And it does so using never-before-published information on the African-Canadian community of Toronto. Based entirely on new research carried out for the experiential theatre show "The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Freedom!" at the Royal Ontario Museum, this volume offers new insights into the rich heritage of the Black people who made Toronto their home before the Civil War. It portrays life in the city during the nineteenth century in considerable detail.

This exciting new book will be of interest to readers young and old who want to learn more about this unexplored chapter in Toronto's history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459748965
Publisher:	Dundurn Press
Publication date:	03/01/2022
Edition description:	4th ed.
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	12 - 15 Years

About the Author

Adrienne Shadd is a researcher, writer, curator and editor living in Toronto. She is co-author of "We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up": Essays in African Canadian Women's History (University of Toronto Press, 1994) and co-editor of Talking About Identity: Encounters in Culture, Language and Identity (Between the Lines, 2001), with Carl James. Most recently, she has curated exhibitions entitled "...and still I rise" in Hamilton, Ontario, on the experience of African-Canadian workers in the twentieth century, and "Black Mecca: The Story of Chatham's Black Community" in Chatham, Ontario.

Afua Cooper's doctoral dissertation on Henry Bibb is a pioneering work on the life of the 19th-century abolitionist. She teaches African-Canadian history at the University of Toronto and is co-author of "We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up": Essays in African Canadian Women's History (University of Toronto Press, 1994). In February 2002, Afua curated "A Glimpse of Black Life in Victorian Toronto: 1850-1860" for the City of Toronto Museum Division. An award-winning poet, her fifth book of poetry, Copper Woman and Other Poems, is being published by Natural Heritage in the spring of 2006. Her most recent book is The Hanging of Angelique: Canada, Slavery and the Burning of Montreal, published by HarperCollins Canada in January 2006.

Karolyn Smardz Frost, historian and archaeologist, is a specialist on the Underground Railroad. A widely published writer on African-Canadian history, public archaeology and multicultural education, she completed her doctorate in the History of Race and Slavery, under the supervision of Dr. James W. St.G. Walker at the University of Waterloo. She directed, until its demise in 1995, the Toronto District School Board's acclaimed Archaeological Resource Centre, the pilot project of which was the excavation of the Thornton and Lucie Blackburn fugitive slave homestead. Her biography of this remarkable couple, I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad, is being published in 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the U.S. and Thomas Allen Publishers in Canada.

Read an Excerpt

Deborah Brown: A Fugitive Slave Woman

On December8, 1908, The Evening Telegram featured an elderly woman named Deborah Brown in a story on the old Seaton Village community. Mrs. Brown had died in 1898 and is reported to have been 111 years old at the time of her clench. She was considered to be the oldest resident in Seaton Village and her house was said to be the oldest building in the village. Deborah Brown was a former slave from Maryland, United States. She had escaped to Canada in the mid-18oos with her husband, Perry, when they learned he was to be sold. The couple moved to the Township of York, north of Bloor Street, the northern boundary of the City of Toronto at the rime. They lived in the same one­storey frame cottage on Markham Street near Bathurst and Bloor for over 50 years.

Nowadays it is hard for us to imagine that when Deborah and Perry Brown first moved to the area it was rural farmland. During the 187os, their neighbourhood, by then known as Seaton Village, was bounded by Bedford Road on the east, Christie Street on the west, and Davenport Road to the north, with Bloor Street as its southern perimeter. In 1888, Seaton Village and the Town of Yorkville, which had developed just to the east around Yonge and Bloor streets, were annexed to the growing City of Toronto. In a span of fifty years, the region where the Browns lived had gone from being on the rural fringes to being in the centre of the city.

Deborah Brown worked as a washerwoman, and her husband was a labourer. The Browns were a working-class family judging from their occupations and their standard of living. Deborah Brown could not read or write and her husband Perry was probably just as illiterate. They purchased the house and a quarter-acre lot on which they lived for a sum of $50 in 1870. Their house was a modest wooden cottage with a garden, and they owned two pigs. Deborah and Perry Brown were part of a large Black community that was comprised of a working class, a middle class of skilled craftsmen and shop owners, and a tiny upper class of wealthy families whose businesses had been very successful. These wealthier Black Torontonians often owned a great deal of property that they rented out.

Deborah Brown’s work as a washerwoman was one of the jobs that women did to earn money but it was hard, backbreaking work. Prior to the invention of electric washers and dryers, washing clothes involved hauling and heating a large bucket of water and mixing in a lye-based soap. Clothes had to be washed, rinsed, dried and ironed. Many women were able to earn a living by taking in other people’s laundry. However, Mrs. Brown lived during the Victorian era of the 1800s. At the time, a woman’s primary responsibility was her own household, and it was frowned upon if a woman engaged in waged work. Nevertheless, most Black women had always worked. Their income was needed to help support the family.

Later in life, Mrs. Brown was listed as a nurse in the city directory. It is not likely that she studied nursing formally, but she would have gained a great deal of knowledge over the years in curing various sicknesses through the use of herbs, roots, and the like. It would not have been unusual for her to apply her considerable experience and know-how to nurse family and friends back to health.

The Browns were of the Wesleyan Methodist faith. They probably attended the Black churches in downtown Toronto from time to time — certainly on special occasions like Christmas, Easter and Emancipation Day, the time set aside in early August to celebrate the British Act of Parliament of 1833 that freed slaves throughout the British Empire. However, Deborah Brown also attended the Methodist church in Seaton Village. The Evening Telegram article noted that even in extreme old age Mrs. Brown continued to be a member of the Sunday School, and delighted in getting up o n t he platform with the children at Sunday School anniversary celebrations. Most Black people at that time belonged to either the Methodist or Baptist faith.

Deborah Brown had at least one child that we know of, Sarah Brooks. An eight­year-old child named William H. Brown, born in the United States, lived with Deborah and Perry in 1861. But because of Deborah’s age of 56, it is not certain whether William was her child or grandchild. He may even have been a nephew or great nephew. Unfortunately, after 1861, William was not listed in the same house­ hold as Deborah Brown again, and we are not sure what happened to him.

More is known about daughter Sarah, however. She was born in the United States and she in turn had a daughter named Amelia, who was also American-born. According to the census records of the time, it is known that these women were living on Centre Street in St. John’s Ward, just north of today’s City Hall. Sarah was 56 and Amelia was 23 years of age in 1881. Both were widows. Like Deborah, they too worked as laundresses. We think that Sarah Brooks did not come to Canada with her parents, and that she may have been left behind in slavery.

Rather than making a “return trip” south after the Civil War, some African Canadians brought their family members north to live with them in Canada after the Emancipation Proclamation. On January, 1863, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, freed the American slaves in the states that had rebelled against the Union.

Table of Contents

• A Word from the Ontario Black History Society
• Introduction
• 1 Deborah Brown: Freedom Seeker
• 2 Blacks in Early Toronto
• 3 Underground Railroad to Toronto
• 4 Social, Cultural, and Religious Life in Toronto's Black Community
• 5 Life in the City
• 6 Living on the Outskirts
• 7 The World of Children
• 8 Political Life
• 9 Black Torontonians in the Civil War
• 10 Notable Black Torontonians
• 11 How Do We Know? History
• 12 How Do We Know? Archaeology
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Further Reading
• Image Credits
• Index
• About the Authors

Editorial Reviews

As a young African Canadian woman born and raised in Toronto, I am thrilled to turn the pages of this book and discover my roots and heritage. I honour the courage and determination of the freedom seekers who made Toronto their home and helped to develop the city. Cooper, Shadd, and Smardz Frost have diligently brought to light and shared with us, unknown histories of Black ancestors. The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! is ambitious in its scope, thorough in its depth, and expansive in its reach. It is an essential read for people of my generation and beyond. I commend and thank the authors for this ground-breaking work.

author of #BlackInSchool Habiba Cooper Diallo

The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! is a story to be told and retold over time and who better to do this than these most capable historians, Afua Cooper, Adrienne Shadd, and Karolyn Smardz Frost. A history worth the retelling.

Hon. Dr. Jean Augustine

The book will be an invaluable addition to any school, public, and personal library that seeks to document the history of and contribution to society of African Canadians and the role that the Underground Railroad played in boosting the immigration of Black people to what became Ontario. Highly recommended.

CM: Canadian Review of Materials

Before and during the American Civil War, 30,000 to 40,000 freedom seekers from the United States escaped slavery and came to Canada. Three distinguished scholars of Black history tell that powerful story in this concise, readable and well-illustrated book, in a way that is accessible for students and general readers of many ages. The detailed social and political history is brought to life in dozens of remarkable profiles of the women, men and families who made that dangerous journey. We learn how they escaped, the terrible choices they often made to leave spouses and children behind, the jobs they found, the businesses they built and the ways they contributed to their new home. Originally published in 2002, this new edition retains the appealing format of the original but has been thoroughly revised and updated with much new information including a chapter on the archaeology of Toronto’s African Canadian past. The Underground Railroad enriches our understanding of the history of Toronto.

Toronto Book Award jury citation

The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! stands out as an engaging and highly readable account of the lives of Black people in Toronto in the 1800s. Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooper, and Karolyn Smardz Frost offer many helpful points of entry for readers learning for the first time about Black history in Canada. They also give surprising and detailed information to enrich the understanding of people already passionate about this neglected aspect of our own past.

award-winning author of The Book of Negroes Lawrence Hill

The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! stands out as an engaging and highly readable account of the lives of Black people in Toronto in the 1800s. Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooper and Karolyn Smardz Frost offer many helpful points of entry for readers learning for the first time about Black history in Canada. They also give surprising and detailed information to enrich the understanding of people already passionate about this neglected aspect of our own past.

bestselling author of The Illegal Lawrence Hill