Farming in Buxton
Written for Patricia Blonde’s radio program, CKSY, Chatham
Feb 6, 2000 - by Bryan Prince

“Buxton is certainly a very interesting place.  Sixteen years ago, it was a wilderness.  Now, good highways are laid out in all directions through the forest; and by their side, standing back 33 feet from the road, are about two hundred cottages, all built on the same pattern, all looking neat and comfortable.  Around each one is a cleared space, of several acre, which is well cultivated.  The fences are of good order; the barns seem well filled; and cattle, and horses, and pigs, and poultry, abound.  There are signs of industry, and thrift, and comfort, everywhere; signs of intemperance, of idleness, of want, nowhere.  There is no tavern, and no groggery; but there is a chapel and school-house."

Most interesting of all are the inhabitants.  Twenty years ago, most of them were slaves, who owned nothing, not even their children.  Now they own themselves; they own their houses and farms; and they have their wives and children about them.  They are enfranchised citizens of a government that protects their rights.  They have the great essentials for human happiness, something to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”

These words, written in 1864, come from Samuel Gridley Howe who had been commissioned by Abraham Lincoln to travel throughout Canada West and report on the condition of refugees from slavery.  It was hoped that the information from these findings would be useful in preparing for the future for newly emancipated slaves in the United States following the Civil War.

These people followed in the footsteps of Blacks that worked the land that had came to British North America years earlier.  Some came as the property of the United Empire Loyalists at a time when there was still slavery here in Canada.  Some were granted their own land as a reward for fighting with the British army during the American Revolution.  Still others were runaway slaves such as the two former slaves from Kentucky that one source credits as having introduced the growing of tobacco into what is now Ontario.

The Elgin Settlement, which contained the Buxton mission, was composed of 9,000 acres in Raleigh Township, Kent County.  It was founded in 1849 as a refuge for runaway slaves.  The economy, naturally enough, evolved primarily around agriculture.  These early pioneers brought with them the farming skills that they had acquired on southern plantations and in some cases on farms in northern states and in other areas of Canada.  The land was divided into 50 acre lots and sold for $2.50 per acre.  Residents had 10 years to pay for it.  As soon as small clearings were made in the dense forests of oak, hickory, and elm, crops were planted.  A report given in 1852 states that “the land is best adapted for the culture of wheat; but it also produces Indian corn, tobacco and hemp, equal to any that is grown in the Western States.” And you all thought that growing hemp just began here a couple of years ago!

A major obstacle that stood in the way of the successful cultivation of crops was the fact that much of the settlement was low-lying and marshy and often the water puddle on the land well into planting time.  A system of drainage ditches was developed to alleviate this problem.  This allowed for the production of crops in addition to those just mentioned - hay, oats, potatoes, and turnips.  By 1855, there were 140 cows, 50 oxen, 40 horses, 38 sheep, and 600 hogs.

A wonderful letter dated March of 1854 survives written by Mary Jane Robinson who lives in Buxton to a friend that still lived in New York.

“O, my dear friend, how I do want to see you again; I do wish that you would try to come to Buxton, Canada West….  In September we got a fine cow, with a heifer calf ten months old.  So I have been quite a country-woman.  I both churned my own butter and milked my own cow.  We have go three nice sows, and, by and by, I shall have some geese, and chickens, and ducks, and all those things….  I raised a fine sight of tobacco.  We had turnips as big as the crown of your husband’s hat, and cabbage as large as a water-pail.  O, don’t laugh, for it’s a fact – for the ground is so rich that it raises up everything in no time."

She also mentions other supplements to their diet:

“We have all kinds of game, deer, raccoon, ground-hogs, black squirrels, hens, pheasants, quails, wild turkey, wild duck, woodcock and red-headed woodpeckers, and sapsuckers, wild red raspberries and plumbs, crabapples and wild gooseberries, and all kinds of nuts.  Not as cold as I thought….  Whatever you raise in the ground, you can sell it in Chatham, six miles from here.  My husband walks up and down once or twice a-week, and thinks nothing of it; but I hope that soon we’ll have a team of our own….  Land will bring anything you plant just as I did in Weeksville (New York) only it wanted more manuring; only put in the seed and pray to the Giver of rain, and they will come up.  O, dear, how I want to see you again. Do come to Buxton, Canada West.”

Buxton continued to grow and to prosper until the period following the Civil War (in which 70 men from the Settlement fought in various Union Army regiments.)  At its conclusion, there was a great exodus back to the United States.  People returned to the land of their youth for many reasons.  They included – returning to find loved ones that may have been left behind years before, to find better job opportunities, or to use their skills and education to help with the Reconstruction.  A fascinating anecdote about this period involves a member of the Shadd family, that were very prominent in Chatham and in Raleigh Township.  Israel Shadd and his wife worked on a model plantation in the Mississippi River Valley where in 1865, the final year of the Civil War, 2000 bales of cotton were grown with a profit of nearly $160,000.  Prior to this, the plantation had been a model for black economic independence and self-government.  When the owner of this plantation was jailed some of the blacks pressed for his release from prison due to the many kindnesses that he had shown to his slaves. The imprisoned master’s name?

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America!

The 9,000 acres of Buxton Settlement lands (which had been exclusively owned by Blacks) were sold, or in some cases, abandoned.  Of the Black population in and around the Buxton Settlement that approached 2,000 people, there now remains about 100.  Whereas almost the entire population was involved in agriculture, there now remains only four families that still farm on former settlement lands.

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website created July 2008; updated November 2009; by Lori Gardner