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Crossing the Niagara

10/14/2015

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Picture
A fantastic week for the film’s progress! While we continue to search for funds and sponsors of the project, it seems we’ve made some serious inroads on both sides of the border; in the US we’ve reached an agreement with a charitable organization that they will provide sponsorship of the film – allowing us to ultimately offer tax credits to US citizens that donate! While we’re still working out the final details for it to become official, our application was accepted and the organization was excited to offer their support, especially considering their mission states they look to support historical films and projects. A huge piece of the puzzle for us, as it has opened the gates for many US grants and other funding opportunities, ones that were previously off-limits or just out of reach. We’ll certainly be putting this to good use! And our American friends and followers – we’ll be letting you know precisely when we can open the doors to tax-receipt eligible donations. Canadians – it won’t be far behind either!
                Meanwhile on the northern side of the border, we’ve been in talks with a couple organizations about potential sponsorship of the film, while another organization has told us of possible donations that could be coming our way soon – giving us another huge boost!
                In turn, we’ve began to schedule our US research trips and push our “remote” research further. I’m excited to announce that in November we will be undertaking our first research trip to Baltimore – one that we’ve already started lining up places to visit and people to talk with – and should be able to start collecting materials and fitting puzzle pieces together in a much more concrete way.  Given what we’ve discovered so far in London and the area, there’s an aura of excitement around that trip to see what turns up in physical documents and pictures. A thrilling build of anticipation! Be prepared for a swath of information, posts, and photos around that time.
                Now all this cross talk of borders really got us researching the actual logistics of how John Mason and Lewis Chambers would have made it across to Canada from the US. In Southern Ontario, there is no land borders whatsoever (in fact, in Ontario overall, there’s also very few in general, and it’s up near Minnesota and Northern Ontario). Two Great Lakes stood as enormous barriers (Erie and Ontario), and huge, fast rivers cut through the land in between (the Detroit river near the Michigan/Amhertsberg crossing, and the Niagara River between Western New York and the “Niagara Frontier” in Ontario). In a time of little technology and dangerous desperation, we can only imagine what an Escaping slave would have felt, getting to the very edge of true freedom and seeing such an incredible obstacle. And with many slave catchers either hot on their heels or stalking around the border to try and catch any would-be border crossers, the biggest gambles may have been taken at that moment.
                This brought up the obvious question – how DID they physically get across the river? We focussed our searching on the Niagara River this week, as it was a question that didn’t have a simple answer. Initial searching uncovered a few Underground Railroad locations in Buffalo and Lewiston in New York – as usual, the US side of information is much more accessible than the Canadian side – but nothing concrete. In Fort Erie, there were talks of a park called “Freedom Park”, which legend has it was a major terminus for dropping off newly free Blacks, many of whom would be stepping onto Canadian soil for the very first time (often in the dark). Looking at modern photos, it seems this park is now a parking lot with a plaque or monument in the riverside portion of Fort Erie the town – but when looking towards the past, in the 1850s Fort Erie was almost quite literally a Fort that was south of Freedom Park – and the population of Fort Erie the town was a paltry and scattered 835, many of whom would have been farmers inland from the river or British Militia stationed near the border in the Fort itself. The area itself, of course more famously known for the battles fought on the riverbanks (and the numerous ancient forts that are peppered on either side of the Niagara) and the beautiful Niagara Falls approximately half way between the two lakes that the river connected, was mostly forested. The term “the Niagara Frontier” appears on many maps from that time, almost referring to the sparse, empty wilderness on the western side of the river. Conversely the Eastern banks of the Niagara housed a few growing communities such as Buffalo, Niagara Falls (NY) and Lewiston, a border town that was situated at the beginning of the portion of the river after the falls known as the Niagara Gorge.
                For Lewis Chambers and John Mason, swimming across simply wasn’t an option. The water was frigid and rapid, and the distance of a few hundred meters would have been immense to fight the cold that would shut down the body as one swam. Furthermore, at the Buffalo Crossing, getting swept away by the river would be dangerous even if one could keep their head above water and not freeze – the Falls would surely finish the job just a couple miles away. After the falls, it may have seemed more possible, but the massive gorge cut by the river over eons would have created large cliffs and swirling water, making it nearly impossible to go into without some kind of help.
                Help, however, was available. Research shows Lewiston was a strong abolitionist community with a “Station Master” (usually the leader of the community that helped the fugitives) that controlled multiple safe houses in the town, the most important of which was a four story home that was built into the gorge and had multiple levels, many with windows that pointed at the Canadian banks across the river. In a location that’s now known as “Freedom Point”, the station master often loaded up Escapees into a canoe and crossed the river to Canada, releasing them to true freedom for the first time in their lives. The community was very tight-lipped about their actions, never letting outsiders know the logistics or details – and that was critical in a time were sympathetics could also be charged with aiding Fugitive Slaves and fined or imprisoned.
                Meanwhile, just up from Buffalo was a ferry known as the “Black Rock”, which carted many travellers along a canal in the Niagara River that was forged between a long, narrow island and the mainland. Rumours surfaced that this ferry would stow away Escaping Blacks and ferry them across to Freedom Park in Fort Erie, which seems to be likely considering Freedom Park and the location of the Black Rock Ferry are directly across from one another (it is worth noting, however, that the ferry would have had to go around the Island in the Canal first, a distance that would have made the trip considerably longer).
                So, it seems likely that Lewis Chambers and John Mason would have used one of these two methods upon arriving in the area. They both arrived in London and area in the early 1850s, while the first rail bridge that crossed the Niagara River wasn’t complete until 1848 – and while it’s possible that they could have walked across the suspension bridge, logic would point that it’s probably where the heaviest concentration of slave catchers, police, and others that weren’t sympathetic would have been watching. Not to mention the possibility of a train coming while crossing, which would mean certain detection for any on the bridge.  It’s possible that Chambers or Mason used it, but of all the crossings, it’s probably the least likely.
                Here’s a picture of that train bridge crossing the river over the gorge in 1855, which nicely illustrates the difficulty the natural landscape provided for any that would attempt to cross over.
                But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and it’s fantastic to uncover just another piece of a large, complex, and mostly hidden puzzle.
  • Mark

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Baltimore and London - a shared secrecy

10/1/2015

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Oct 1, 2015

What a whirlwind of information we’ve uncovered – and it was simply from peeling the very first lair of open from the next stage of our research.
While our London research is ongoing and exciting, we felt that it was time to really start diving into the US side of the story – the 1850s, as many would assume, was not exactly an ideal time to be a Black person living anywhere south of the Mason Dixon line, and it quickly spread to the entire country when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, making it legal for escaping slaves to be caught by slave catchers and brought back south. And while the Fugitive Slave Act caused a whole plethora of changes and problems for so called “colored” people, it really could take over an entire blog post (and will, but not this one!). Suffice to say, the Fugitive Slave Act really made Canada the only “free” place a Black person could realistically go to. And upon its passing, Upper Canada (now present day Southern Ontario) experienced a big increase in the Black population, many of whom arrived via the various methods provided by the Underground Railroad.

That had ramifications for two of main characters, Lewis Chambers and John Mason, both of whom arrived in the London area shortly after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, and who both claimed to be from the Maryland and Baltimore area. And so we had turned our research lenses to focus on Maryland’s (now) most populous city, and what its society and culture was like during that era.

I think that like many others that don’t know the history of the Underground Railroad and US slavery, we just assumed that like all cities in the south, they all engaged in slavery practices and were all united in their support of slavery itself. The reality is far murkier.

For Baltimore and Maryland, it was much more complicated. Baltimore was founded on one of the inlets of the Chesapeake Bay, and as a port town its economy had close ties to shipping. As Africans were stolen from their homeland and sent to the Americas, Baltimore and its Fells Point became a natural stopping point for slave traders, many of whom came from other slave states with the intention of buying Africans and sending them south, often to New Orleans. Even after importing slaves became illegal, the domestic slave trade more than provided enough business for the area.

The slave trading industry flourished in the city, and many “facilities” for housing slaves were built along the main corridor between the port at Fell’s Point and downtown. These facilities were nothing more than slave pens, which was essentially a primitive jail where the slaves were held while they waited to be sold or shipped.  Stories tell of a sad situation where many slaves were marched in chains down the street from the pens to the awaiting ships at the port while family members sobbed beside them, acutely aware that they would likely never see each other again.

All of this sounds deplorable, and upon quick glance it would be easy to condemn the entire area and its people for the practice. Of course, it’s just not that simple. Many of the city’s whites and religious were opposed to the idea of slavery or indifferent to the issue – however, as the march to the Civil War escalated, Maryland found itself caught in the middle – many were Abolitionists and pro-Union supporters, while others found themselves supporting the Confederate states. The supporters of each side were split county-to-county, and Baltimore quickly became a flash point for that tension. As a result, political alliances were formed and many voted in favour of the Confederate, pro-slavery party as that brought peace to the streets (at least temporarily). But when the Civil War began, Maryland officially became a Union state, although loyalties (and many battlegrounds) continued to be split across either side.

This, of course, is just an overview of the available information we’ve found. And while the fact remains that slavery existed in the city before the Civil War, much of that history has been tucked away, hidden from the public’s view. It’s in that attempt to hide their Black History in Baltimore, over what we suspect is because of its brutal and shameful past – one that the United States in general hopes everyone would forget, despite the impossibility of doing so – where we find strange similarities between Baltimore and London, Ontario.

Now, apart from the obvious connection of Lewis Chambers and John Mason, and the influx of blacks in the area after the Fugitive Slave Act was rigorously enforced, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of links between the two cities upon first glance. However, what we’ve discovered is that London and Baltimore both seem to try and keep their black history very quiet – albeit for different reasons – and much of that culture and past has been swept under the rug. In Baltimore, it seems to stem from a shared desire to not “rock the boat” and upset a delicate balance between blacks and whites in the area over what is indisputably a dark time in the city’s history. In London, however, the sweeping under the rug seems to appear unintentional (although that’s not true either) – hidden in history behind what’s often associated with a Canadian cultural phenomenon of being modest and trying not to boast. Despite the different reasons, the end result is the same – a slice of society and history unknown except by a select few historians.

It’s that unknown part that we plan on changing. We’ve barely opened the book and it’s revealed so much more that’s beyond the forward. And with a November research trip to Baltimore in the works, we’re expecting to pull page after page out into public awareness.

It’s too important to leave hidden.

Mark

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