North American African-American Communities in the 19th Century

Surviving original home at Elgin Settlement

There were many African-American communities in the United States, a particularly successful one in Michigan. The richest man in town built a mansion on the lake. But the most famous North American black enclave in the 19^th century was the nine-thousand-acre Elgin Settlement in Kent County, Ontario, Canada, not far from Detroit. 

In the 1800's Kent County became known as a place of refuge for fugitive slaves who escaped from the South, but it enticed both free blacks and slaves to settle along the Thames River. The land was rich in natural resources and far enough away from the border that it was relatively safe from slave hunters.

The people of the Elgin Settlement swore off liquor, soaked up Greek and Latin, planted flower gardens, and made their own tools. The settlers raised corn, wheat, tobacco, hemp, maple sugar, cows, sheep and hogs and had black walnut orchards. They put up picket fences and built homes with at least four rooms set 30 feet back from the road. They had a school, a sawmill, brickyard, rope factory, and gristmill. There were grocery stores, churches, a meat market and a tiny candy store. 

Anti-slavery lectures and other meetings took place in the grocery stores, which were the “humping, pulsing, laughing, story-sharing, neighbor-helping” heart of the town. After dark, people sat on the porch and told stories about the old times in the South and the family members they’d lost. The Elgin Settlement was quoted as being called “the coloured man's Paris”.

Rev. William King of Louisiana is credited with establishing the Kent County community that included the Elgin Settlement. He had moved from Ireland to Louisiana as a young man and married into a family that owned slaves. King did not believe in slavery, but he could not free his slaves in Louisiana, so he traveled to Canada and bought a large tract of land on which to start a settlement. Despite government objections, he pursued his goal to create a Utopian community where blacks and whites would be treated equally.

Although the black settlers in Elgin knew they might be captured and returned to slavery, when the Civil War started, many black men from the Settlement went to fight.  Several of the black officers who fought in the war were from the Settlement. After the war some of the black settlers returned to the U.S to find lost family and to help with reconstruction. But many stayed in Canada and continued to contribute to the area’s wealth.