Slides 5-10
Slides 5-7
Once the Pioneers of African descent arrived in Nova Scotia in 1783 and 1813, free Black Pioneers, indentured servants and slaves needed to build homes for themselves. They were also employed to build some of the first towns in Nova Scotia. Many were excellent carpenters.
Slide 8
They had few possessions and little money to bring to Nova Scotia. Many slept on beds made of boxes and used warm furs as blankets during the winter. Families had few children as they learned to make full use of the resources of the environment.
Slide 9
Most were highly skilled tradespeople who had learned carpentry, farming, marketing, and furniture making through a system of apprenticeship on large farms and plantations in the United States.
Slide 10
Skilled chimney sweeps kept the community safe from fire. The chimney sweeps kept the wooden chimneys of the 2000 wooden houses of Shelburne in good working order, free of soot and creasote. Fire could easily destroy an entire community as fire fighting was very difficult. Any family which did not properly maintain a chimney had to pay a fine for endangering the rest of the community.
Black Loyalists of 1783
When the Loyalists of African descent first came to Nova Scotia in 1783, they were assigned to clear land and to construct many homes for the white Loyalists along with homes and communities for themselves. Many Black Loyalists were skilled carpenters who had learned the trade in the United States.
Lumber, imported from Boston, was used to build homes for wealthy white Loyalists. Because the Black Loyalists received few of the promised provisions, most of their homes were crude log huts or cabins chinked with moss.
The largest Loyalist settlement was Port Roseway, today called Shelburne. A Black Loyalist militia formed by the British in the Thirteen Colonies built most of Port Roseway's homes, wharves and the jail. Colonel Stephen Blucke, a man of good reputation, was in charge of the Black Loyalist militia. The Black Loyalist militia was made up of 21 companies of Black pioneers, each commanded by a Black captain. Colonel Blucke organized his people for the construction of Shelburne and the Black community of Birchtown or Burchtown, located on the northwestern outskirts of Shelburne. Birchtown was named after General Birch who had signed the certificates of freedom which gave Loyalists of African descent their freedom. Birchtown had an estimated 1521 Black people.
Colonel Stephen Blucke built a two storey frame house for his family. He fared much better than the majority of Blacks in Nova Scotia at this time.
In the County of Annapolis, in the township of Digby, Brindleytown was built by free Blacks under the leadership of Thomas Peters, a Sergeant in the Black Pioneer regiment. Brindleytown was the second largest Black Loyalist community in Nova Scotia in 1783. Black Loyalist pioneers in this community received some lumber as part of their provisions, but there was generally not enough wood to build the homes they were skilled to build. They generally did not have enough money to buy lumber which had been promised for free.
The third largest Black Loyalist community was found in the Guysborough area, County of Sydney. 118 people of African descent inhabited Chedabucto. The community of Upper Tracadie, located in Guysborough, was built under the leadership of Thomas Browsriggs in 1784.
Birchtown, Brindleytown and Tracadie, were the only all Black Loyalist communities in Nova Scotia built by Black people. There were other large concentrations of Black Loyalists within general communities. Preston, on the eastern side of Halifax Harbour near Halifax, had 85 people, 29 of whom were Black.
The Black Loyalist Pioneers made furniture for their homes because they had very few possessions to bring with them from America. Those who were not carpenters had very little furniture. They used cartons and boxes as tables.
Far more Black and white Loyalists came Nova Scotia than the government had planned. Black Loyalists suffered greatly from the unfair land granting system. The corruption in land distribution saw Black Loyalists placed, without title, on small lots of land with poor soil. Black Loyalists lacked the basic provisions received by white Loyalists.
Limitations were placed on the freedom and opportunities of Black Loyalists. The large number of free Blacks had to compete for the few skilled jobs because they did not have land from which to earn a living. Because of the competition for few jobs, wages paid for skilled work were low. In the Loyalist town of Shelburne, competition among Black Loyalists and white former military men for the few skilled jobs resulted in Canada's first race riot in the summer of 1784.
Shelburne started to decline due to poor soil for farming and the failure of the whaling industry. Many white Loyalists left Shelburne for other areas of Nova Scotia. Some returned to the United States. Black Loyalists were less able to leave the Shelburne area. Those who were servants went with the white Loyalists. Many feared a return to the United States because of its slavery laws.
To survive in Nova Scotia, many skilled, free Black Loyalists who could not find work and those who were not given enough land and provisions became indentured servants. They hired themselves out to other employers for a small wage or in return for provisions which allowed basic survival. Many who lived in rural areas went to the City of Halifax to work.
The Black Pioneers of 1812
The largest group of Black Pioneers of 1812 settled land abandoned by the Maroons and Black Loyalists who left for Sierra Leone in 1792 and 1800. As a group, they settled several thousand acres of land. The largest settlement was built in the Preston area, 8 to 10 km from Halifax. Other settlements were located at Hammond's Plains, Windsor Road, Refugee Hill (close to the North West Arm in Halifax), Beech Hill now called Beechville, Porter's Lake, Cobequid Road, Prospect Road, Lucasville Road and in the interior of Nova Scotia.
Each family was given four hectares of land. The four hectare lots were too small to supply all the wood needed to build their homes, to start farms and businesses, and to heat their homes. Adjoining the settlement of Preston, woodlots of 1000 acres supplied wood for fuel, fencing and home construction. Some pioneers did not receive deeds to the land and therefore did not own the land as promised by the British government. They were given tools to construct their houses, but few building materials.
Many of the homes did not have cellars. Some had dirt floors so that available wood could be used for the most necessary construction. However, even with these hardships, between 1813 and 1816, many Black Pioneers managed to build modest homes and to establish small farms by helping one another. The Black Pioneers developed very strong communal fellowship and strength among of 1812 through racial and cultural ties.
Some Black Pioneers of 1812 who settled in the City of Halifax were not allowed to rent or purchase homes. They had to live in poor houses provided by the city.
1. What do you already know about the process of building a Pioneer cabin?
2. What difficulties in building a house might the Black Pioneers have experienced which other Nova Scotian pioneers of the time did not experience?
Follow Up Activities
1. Why did some pioneers build log cabins while others built two storey houses using milled lumber?
2. Describe the process of building a Black Pioneer house using words and a series of drawings.
3. Were the Black Pioneers skilled carpenters? What visual information from the slides supports your answer?
4. Why was building a house one of the first thing to be done by Black Pioneers?
5. How did the Pioneers help one another to build homes?
Extension Activities
1. Compare building a home today with building a home during the time of the Black Pioneers.
2. Design and build a model or mural of a Nova Scotia Black Pioneer village. Include Pioneer cabins, businesses, churches, school house, roads, fences, and any other features which show how life was lived, the struggles and joys of the Pioneer settlers.
3. Identify and research the lives of outstanding community members who were leaders during the building of the Black communities. Create a mural, biography or a fictional series of letters of the leader which reveal the person's life, work and contributions. Important leaders for research include:
4. Distribute the blank map of Nova Scotia located in the Reproducible Activities Section. In small groups, and with reference to a current map of Nova Scotia, label Black Pioneer communities established by the Black Pioneers of 1783 and 1813 and other communities of the period. Use map symbols to distinguish those communities established during each period.
Black Pioneer Loyalists 1783 Black Pioneers in 1812 Birchtown East Preston
area
Brindleytown (Digby) Hammonds Plains
Preston area Beechville
Tracadie/Guysborough Lucasville Road
Weymouth Falls Preston (North)
Cherry Brook
Windsor
5. Calculate the distances between communities. What might be the impact of these distances on the ability of communities to support one another and to communicate? How might people have travelled from community to community?
Brown, Wallace et. al.. Victorious in Defeat, The Loyalist in Canada, The Promised Land, Toronto: Methuen Publications Ltd., 1984.
See especially chapter 8, p. 169.
C harles, May Paul. Left By Themselves, Toronto: Scholastic, 1972.
Two pioneer girls are trapped during a great blizzard in 1850 on a farm in Iowa. They think they are alone until they discover that a fugitive slave is hiding from slave catchers.
Grant, N. John. The Immigration and Settlement of the Black Refugees of the War of 1812 in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Westphal: The Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, 1990.
Pachai, Bridglal. Beneath the Clouds of the Promised Land: Volume 2, Halifax: The Black Educators Association, 1991.
Parsons, Viola. My Grandmother's Day, Hantsport: Lancelot Press Ltd., 1988.
Walker, W. St. James. The Black Loyalist: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone 1783-1870, New York: African Publishing Company, 1976.
See especially chapters 1-4.
Back to Nova Scotia Black Pioneers Index