Uncle Tom's Journey from Maryland to Canada by Edna M. Troiano

Author:Edna M. Troiano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2019-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

Dawn Settlement historic marker. Ontario Plaques.

The Canada Mission Board gave permission for Henson and Wilson to select a site for the school. After traveling through the area for several months, they settled on the place Henson had long thought suitable: Dawn. The area around Dawn had rich soil suitable for farming, but it also had another asset: a thick forest with a variety of hardwoods, including black walnut trees. They purchased two hundred acres at four dollars per acre. Henson personally purchased an additional two hundred acres at a discount, half of which he sold to the institute for the same low price he had paid.

On December 12, 1841, the British-American Institute opened to twelve students. Intended primarily for fugitive slaves, the school also enrolled Indians and white people. Students studied part of the day and worked part of the day. The goods produced by students were sold, with the proceeds helping to support the school. The school had six trustees: three white men, James Canning Fuller, John Roaf and Frederick Stover, and three black men, Peter Smith, George Johnson, and James C. Brown. In 1842, Henson and his family moved to Dawn.

Shortly after the school opened, Henson added a gristmill to the property. Although fugitives found freedom in Canada, they also faced considerable prejudice. Henson said that they were hindered in the everyday transactions necessary to their well-being. As an example, he told of the difficulty of getting corn ground: “A man would often walk three or four miles with two or three bushels on his shoulders, through paths in which the mud was knee-deep, leave his corn at the mill, and then go repeatedly after it in vain; he would be put off with a variety of excuses till he was quite discouraged, and would conclude that it was almost useless for him to raise any grain; and yet there was no other way for him to have a bit of bread or corn-cake.”87

To solve the problem of gristmill owners keeping the grain brought to them by black people, Henson returned to the United States, a risky undertaking for any fugitive, and raised $5,000 from Boston philanthropists. He had a steam-powered gristmill built on the institute’s land so the Dawn inhabitants had a way to grind the grain they raised.

In order to generate revenue to support the new school, Henson also built a sawmill. The usual method of clearing land in that area was to fell the trees and burn them. Henson’s approach was more enterprising. The community would clear the trees, making the land suitable for farming, and use the sawmill to produce lumber, a highly marketable product, especially in the northeastern United States and England. He returned again to the United States and met with philanthropists in Boston who provided him with $1,400 for the sawmill’s construction.

However, the funds he had received from Boston covered only the framework and roof of the mill. Henson again returned to Boston and explained the situation to the philanthropists, and

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