JOSIAH HENSON AND NANCY HENSON OCTOBER 28-1830

Murphy Browne © October 26, 2021 “I was born June 15th, 1789, in Charles County, Maryland, on a farm belonging to Mr. Francis N, about a mile from Port Tobacco. My mother was the property of Dr. Josiah McP, but was hired by Mr. N to whom my father belonged. The only incident I can remember which occurred while my mother continued on Mr. N's farm, was the appearance one day of my father with his head bloody and his back lacerated.” From The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself by Josiah Henson published 1849. Josiah Henson was an enslaved African man who fled slavery in the USA and arrived in Canada 191 years ago, on October 28, 1830. Henson with his wife and four children arrived in Canada four years before slavery was abolished in Canada on August 1, 1834. In his 1849 published Narrative about his life, Henson documented the horror of living as an enslaved African man, including his only memory of his father (Henson was 3 or 4 years old) who was maimed as punishment for defending his wife against a White rapist. “His right ear was cut off close to his head and he had received a hundred lashes on his back. He had beaten the overseer for a brutal assault on my mother and this was his punishment. And though it was all a mystery to me at the age of three or four years, it was explained at a later period, and I understood that he had been suffering the cruel penalty of the Maryland law for beating a white man.” Henson would later describe in grim detail how his father was punished. “The day for the execution of the penalty was appointed. The Negroes from the neighboring plantations were summoned, for their moral improvement, to witness the scene. A powerful blacksmith named Hewes laid on the stripes. Fifty were given, during which the cries of my father might be heard a mile, and then a pause ensued. True, he had struck a white man, but as valuable property he must not be damaged. Judicious men felt his pulse. Oh! he could stand the whole. Again and again the thong fell on his lacerated back. His cries grew fainter and fainter, till a feeble groan was the only response to his final blows. His head was then thrust against the post, and his right ear fastened to it with a tack; a swift pass of a knife, and the bleeding member was left sticking to the place.” Henson’s father was eventually sold and he never saw his father again. Describing the last time he saw his father, Henson remembered “He was beside himself with mingled rage and suffering.” Henson could not remember much about his father before the horrific maiming, but he later learned that “Previous to this affair my father, from all I can learn, had been a good- humored and light- hearted man, the ringleader in all fun at corn- huskings and Christmas buffoonery. His banjo was the life of the farm, and all night long at a merry- making would he play on it while the other Negroes danced. But from this hour he became utterly changed. Sullen, morose, and dogged, nothing could be done with him. The milk of human kindness in his heart was turned to gall. He brooded over his wrongs. No fear or threats of being sold to the far south- - the greatest of all terrors to the Maryland slave- - would render him tractable. So off he was sent to Alabama. What was his fate neither my mother nor I have ever learned.” Years later Henson detailed the reason his father had been brutally punished, maimed and then sold away from his family. “The explanation I picked up from the conversation of others only partially explained the matter to my mind; but as I grew older I understood it all. It seemed the overseer had sent my mother away from the other field hands to a retired place, and after trying persuasion in vain, had resorted to force to accomplish a brutal purpose. Her screams aroused my father at his distant work, and running up, he found his wife struggling with the man. Furious at the sight, he sprung upon him like a tiger. In a moment the overseer was down, and, mastered by rage, my father would have killed him but for the entreaties of my mother, and the overseer's own promise that nothing should ever be said of the matter. The promise was kept- - like most promises of the cowardly and debased- - as long as the danger lasted.” While Henson was still a small child his enslaver Dr. Josiah McPherson, died and Henson, his mother and siblings were sold at auction. “My brothers and sisters were bid off one by one while my mother holding my hand looked on in an agony of grief, the cause of which I but ill understood at first, but which dawned on my mind, with dreadful clearness as the sale proceeded.” Henson as a 5- or 6-year-old became so ill after his mother was sold that he was eventually sold to his mother’s new enslaver Isaac Riley, “at such a trifling rate that it could not be refused.” Henson married Nancy, an enslaved African woman when he was 22 years old and the couple eventually had 12 children. When Henson was 36 years old his enslaver Isaac Riley, the man to who Henson and his mother had been sold, found himself in financial difficulties and to hide his “assets,” persuaded Henson to take 18 enslaved Africans (including Henson, his wife and their children) from Maryland to his brother Amos Riley’s plantation in Kentucky. The group of 18 enslaved Africans led by Henson, left Maryland in February 1825. While passing through the free state of Ohio, "colored people gathered round us, and urged us with much importunity to remain with them." Henson refused to remain a free man in Ohio, considering that it was more important to keep the promise made to his enslaver than to free himself, his wife, his children and the other enslaved Africans. Years later, as a free man living in Canada, Henson lamented that decision "I have often had painful doubts as to the propriety of my carrying so many other individuals into slavery again, and my consoling reflection has been, that I acted as I thought at the time was best. In the 1973 published Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films African American film historian and author Donald Bogle writes: “Always as toms are chased, harassed, hounded, flogged, enslaved, and insulted, they keep the faith, n'er turn against their white massas, and remain hearty, submissive, stoic, generous, selfless, and oh-so-very kind. Thus they endear themselves to white audiences and emerge as heroes of sorts.” Josiah Henson eventually made the decision to flee from enslavement on the Isaac Riley plantation in Kentucky and arrived in Canada on October 28, 1830. Henson did not make the journey to freedom alone. He brought his wife and the four children that they had at time, to Canada. The Henson family travelled on foot by night and hid in the woods by day. After a long and dangerous six-week journey, the Hensons arrived in Upper Canada/Ontario on the morning of October 28, 1830. In 1830, (Upper Canada) Ontario had become a refuge for enslaved Africans (beginning in 1793) who had escaped from the United States, even though slavery was practiced in the province and throughout Canada until August 1, 1834. In 1793, Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe passed An Act to prevent the further introduction of Slaves, and limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province. That law was enacted because of the resistance of Chloe Cooley, an enslaved African woman in Upper Canada/Ontario. On March 14, 1793, Chloe Cooley, an enslaved African woman in Queenston, was beaten, bound, thrown in a boat and sold across the river to a new owner in the United States. Her screams and violent resistance was brought to the attention of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe by Peter Martin, a free African man living in Canada who had been a soldier in Butler's Rangers, and had witnessed the outrage. Simcoe tried to abolish slavery in the province. He was met with opposition in the House of Assembly, some of whose members were enslavers. A compromise was reached and on July 9, 1793, An Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province was passed that prevented the further introduction of slaves into Upper Canada and allowed for the gradual abolition of slavery although no slaves already living in Upper Canada/Ontario were freed. It was the first legislation that limited slavery and led to a freedom movement of enslaved Africans from the USA, that became known as the Underground Railroad. The Act did not prevent the buying and selling of enslaved Africans in the province as evidenced by the infamous advertisement on February 10, 1806, where Peter Russell, a member of the House of Assembly was selling Peggy Pompadour and her 15-year-old son Jupiter. The legislation did not end slavery in Canada or even in Ontario, but it did prevent the importation of enslaved Africans. This meant that any enslaved African who fled slavery in the USA and arrived in Upper Canada/Ontario was free. When the Henson family arrived on October 28, 1830, others had already made Upper Canada/Ontario their home, including Black Loyalists from the American Revolution and many other freedom seekers from the War of 1812. Henson became a leader in the community. In 1841, Henson and a group of abolitionists bought 200 acres of land southwest of the Town of Dresden and established Dawn, an African Canadian community where other enslaved Africans who fled slavery in the USA could settle. At its height, the Dawn settlement had approximately 500 residents, but many members returned to the USA in the 1860s after slavery was abolished there. Henson chose to remain in Canada and he and his wife supposedly spent the remainder of their lives in the two-storey house which today is on the Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site in Dresden, Ontario. The site was acquired by the Ontario Heritage Trust in February 2005, ironically, 180 years after Henson began that ill-fated journey (February 1825) from Maryland to Kentucky. Henson transitioned to the ancestral realm on May 5, 1883, at almost 94 years old. Murphy Browne © October 26, 2021