Atlantic Books

Atlantic Books

Locate me
FR

Slavery

by

Afua Cooper

Peggy is in the habit of running away
it would be bad enough
if she left by herself
but now she is taking her children with her.
She is a very bad woman
a mean slave
she goes to the outskirts of the city
and roams in the bushes
eating berries
and wading in the Don River
catching salmon
that still travel to these parts

She has erected a hut of sorts
from the brambles of the elderberry tree
she lived there with Amy and Milly for three weeks
until Peter sent the constables to retrieve her
he returned the children to the house
but lodged Peggy in jail

Now he wants to sell her
but neither Joseph Brant
nor Matthew Elliot
wants to buy her
on account of her fugitive career
though they had promised Peter they would buy her.
Because no one wants her
Peter has to keep her in jail
he resents paying the jailer’s fee
If only this mean slave
would behave!

Peggy’s incorrigible son Jupiter
has followed in her fugitive steps
he has Just ran off
someone saw him in the vicinity of the Don River
around Pottery Road
lurking about Mr. Long’s farm
Peter has sent the constables after him.

Peter really wishes to be rid of Peggy
I for one do not want her ever again in this house
I hate the very sight of her
after she smashed the fine China
I crossed the sea with from Ireland

Because the jailer’s fee is mounting
Peter is forced to put a ‘For Sale’ ad in the paper
Matthew Elliot has disappointed us
Joseph Brant the same
perhaps someone else will take pity on Peter
And take the wretch and her son off his hand

I have already gifted my god-daughter Elizabeth Dennison
With Milly and Amy.

by

Acadia University professor Karolyn Smardz Frost has rightly earned acclaim for unearthing (literally and figuratively) the hidden history of Blacks in Canada. In 1985, she helped to excavate the residence of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, enslaved blacks from Kentucky who took refuge in Toronto where they founded the city’s first taxicab company. Her award-winning book, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land (2007) documents the couple’s journey.

Steal Away Home chronicles the life of another enslaved Kentuckian, Cecelia Jane Reynolds. At age nine, Reynolds was “gifted” to her master’s teenage daughter, Fanny Thruston. In her forced role as a “lady maid,” Reynolds travelled, at age 15, with the Thruston family to a swank hotel on the US side of Niagara Falls. It was 1846.

There, with the aid of free Blacks who worked at the establishment, she fled to Canada.

“It was surprising … that Southern tourists still insisted on carrying their servants with them to the brink of the Niagara River,” Frost writes. “But they did it all the time, unable to imagine a circumstance without Black hands to fold their clothes or to ready them for bed after an evening’s entertainment. … One day the Thrustons returned to the (hotel) only to find that Cecelia had vanished.”

The absorbing narrative turns on Reynolds’ efforts to secure the freedom of her enslaved mother, Mary, from members of Thruston’s extended family. In an effort to do so, Reynolds exchanged a series of letters with her former mistress (who had taught her basic literary skills).

The correspondence gives rise to an astounding alliance between an aristocratic Southern belle and a determined Black woman who’d once been viewed as “property.”

In a letter to Reynolds, Thruston wrote: “I often think of you Cecelia … I can never forget you, and far from reproaching you for leaving me, I think and always thought it a very natural desire for the slave to be free.”

An intriguing “both sides now” examination of human bondage.

Steal Away Home
by Karolyn Smardz Frost
Harper Collins