From: Geological Survey of Canada, Multicoloured Geological Map no. 1019, 1908, 1 sheet, https://doi.org/10.4095/107885 (Open Access), https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/starweb/geoscan/servlet.starweb?path=geoscan/fulle.web&search1=R=107885
“This paper, read in part before the Nova Scotia Historical Society on March 18, 1898, is an attempt to supply a missing chapter in Canadian history — a sombre and unattractive chapter, it may be, but necessary nevertheless to the completeness of our records. If instances given seem too numerous, it must be remembered that the scepticism of many of the best informed Provincials as to the presence at any time of Negro slaves on the soil of Canada has challenged the production, on the part of the author, of more repeated facts than he would otherwise have deemed necessary. …
“WHITE HUNTERS TRESPASSED on the Dartmouth farm of Mr. Fuller, a “coloured man”, in March 1818. Fuller demanded that they vacate his property immediately, but the hunters claimed that they were on common land which belonged to no single individual or family. Fuller and the hunters traded insults, then blows. Mrs. Fuller and her children responded to the fighting with a volley of rocks which struck the hunters, prompting them to draw their guns and to order the family to retreat. Mrs. Fuller, though, defiantly informed the trespassers that the land was “our own, we are not now in the …
“Since the early 1800s, Nova Scotia has also had a black minority of 3-4% of the population, a racially distinguishable “lumpenproletariat” frequently physically segregated from white society. Although sociological studies have suggested that black marginalization and disunity are purely “cultural,” the history of Africville and the peculiar spatial development of Halifax and Dartmouth calls attention to race as an instrument of “class war” (Clainnont).” Epprecht, Marc “Atlantic Canada and ‘the End of History”: Postmodernism and Regional Underdevelopment” Dalhousie Review, Volume 70, Number 4, 1991 https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/61102/dalrev_vol70_iss4_pp429_458.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
“Other poetic sequences and photos in The Door of My Heart contribute to these door, gate/ gait and (im)mobility motifs in oblique yet suggestive ways. The sequence “Through My Classroom Door,” reflecting Tynes’ experience as a teacher in a racially mixed high school in Dartmouth, addresses the barriers impeding disadvantaged young people-especially the “young pride of old Africa” among whom “too many stumble … fall from hope. ” The chains that impede these young blacks are invisible, yet nevertheless “coffles of old strike fear into / this new face and / heart of darkness” (89-90). The barriers Tynes’ black students …
The Poet as Whole-Body Camera: Maxine Tynes and the Pluralities of Otherness More…
“Across the harbour from Halifax were the settlements of Dartmouth and Preston, already economically dominated by the capital. Dartmouth had been settled in 1784 by twenty families from Nantucket. The men had been engaged in whaling, as had the men of Barrington, but the enterprise had suffered a financial disaster in 1792, and most of the original inhabitants had moved to Milford in South Wales. Preston had been settled in 1784 by Loyalists, disbanded soldiers, and freed Negro slaves. Only the Loyalists had remained. The Negroes were industrious, gaining a living by supplying butter, eggs, and poultry to Halifax, but …
“By 1799, only three hospitals continued to function in the city: the hospital for the Maroons at Dartmouth, the naval hospital, and the poor house hospital.” “It appears from the archival records that the manufacturing of coffins proved to be a significant source of revenue for the institution, supplying coffins for the use of the town, the Cholera Hospital, the Richmond and Melville Island Hospitals, Dartmouth Hospital, Waterloo Hospital, the Bank Head Hospital, as well as the City Home. In the account books recorded on October 21, 1827, the sum of £15.s5 was received by the poorhouse for 61 coffins …
The treatment of Halifax’s poor house dead during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries More…
“DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, A NEW vision of shelter for low income families received widespread support from surprisingly varied sectors of the population. Yet, despite the encouragement of labour unions, social workers, planners, architects and important parts of the construction industry, the first public housing project did not actually open until 1949 in Toronto’s Regent Park. The second arose in St. John’s, Newfoundland, immediately after Confederation, and the third, despite the myth of Maritime “conservatism”, was located in Halifax. In fact, Halifax had been one of the first centres of continued agitation for public housing, which began in 1930. The …
From Study to Reality: The Establishment of Public Housing In Halifax, 1930-1953 More…
“According to the muster of Loyalists at Dartmouth, Bethaser Creamer had four black “servants” named Ben, Pompey, Mary, and Sarah. According to the Book of Negroes, Ben, Sarah, and Mary were the “Property of Bethaser Creamer.” Again, on the muster these slaves were listed as servants, but in another document they were designated slaves. On the same muster, under the category of servants, a few such as Thom Webster seem to have been white, but many in the servant category were listed as blacks with no surnames including Bristol, William, Nanny, Stafford, Collins, Harry, Cesar, and Alexander. It seems fair …
“The majority of the 1600 African Americans who landed in Nova Scotia originated from the Tidewater Chesapeake and the Georgia Sea Islands. The Chesapeake Refugees’ experience with American slavery differed from their counterparts in the Sea Islands. They worked on small to mid-sized farms with only a few other slaves, usually less than twenty, under the close supervision of owners or overseers. Although some still hoed tobacco, as a result of the European wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most slaves worked in mixed agricultural production. This switch to various types of agricultural production markedly increased the …
The Development of Black Refugee Identity in Nova Scotia, 1813-1850 More…
Is Dartmouth different? In the 19th century it certainly was. From the Reports of the London Vaccine Institution, we have a contribution from July 28th, 1823 about Dartmouthian and Quaker Seth Coleman and how he tended to the people of Preston (and Dartmouth at large) who had smallpox. In 1814, when the “medical gentleman of the town of Halifax were not to be induced to cross the harbour”, Seth Coleman stepped in and saved the lives of at least 423 people, including 285 Black refugees and 59 Mi’kmaq. Coleman regretted the racial prejudice expressed by most colonists and Nova Scotian …
On July 17th 1795, Joshua Evans arrived at Dartmouth, and stayed for almost two weeks, visiting with local Quakers Seth Coleman and Thomas Green, among ten other local families. Evans, a Quaker minister and abolitionist, was born in 1731 in West Jersey. He was a vegetarian and a fervent proponent of the peace testimony, Quaker plainness, and ending slavery. “…Wherever he went, Evans was acutely sensitive to all suffering. He would visit any Indian village near his route, relaying the needs he found there to whatever Meeting he was visiting, suggesting members take action, which they usually did. He often …
Just a random history podcast about American History – and wouldn’t you know – it pertains to Dartmouth. Alan Taylor, the Thomas Jefferson chair of American history at the University of Virginia, is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for United States history and the author of seven books, most recently “The Internal Enemy: Slavery and war in Virginia 1772 to 1832. Here he relays the beginnings of his latest book: ———- “…I started out from an unusual direction in that I was doing a book about Canada and the United States during the era of the War of …
The following excerpts are from “Survival of an African Nova Scotian Community: Up the Avenue, Revisited” by Adrienne Lucas Sehatzadeh, 1998. An incredible resource of the Black history of Dartmouth that is certainly worth your time to read. “The part of Crichton Avenue above Lyngby Avenue is the area where the Black settlement started. Crichton Avenue winds its way north/south from the downtown area, along the western shore of Sullivan’s Pond and Lake Banook.” “Crichton Avenue has been a major roadway in Dartmouth for over 100 years and intersects Ochterloney Street in the downtown area, about one kilometre from Halifax …
“Photograph shows the congregation of Dartmouth Lake Church (now Victoria Road United Baptist Church).The church, also known in its early days as the African meeting house, was founded in 1844. Until 1906 the church was located at the corner of what is now Crichton Ave. and Micmac Blvd.” Plaque from inside Victoria Road Baptist Church: “IN LOVING MEMORY OF EARLY BLACK FATHERS WHO SETTLED AT DARTMOUTH LAKE ROAD 1814, (NOW CRICHTON AVENUE) AND WHOSE ABANDONED GRAVES WERE EXHUMED AUGUST 1976, AND MOVED TO CHRIST CHURCH CEMETERY. REMEMBERED INCLUDE: MARTHA TYNES, GEORGE TYNES, ELIZABETH TYNES, JAMES RILEY AND ISSAC SMITH. DEDICATED …