Land's Memory: Looking for Traces of the

Old Durham Rd.

Black Pioneer Settlement

Background history:

After the first nation peoples ceded the land to the British crown in what is now Grey County, the very first settlers along the Durham Road were people of African descent. Veterans of the War of 1812, those freed by British slave owners, and refugees from slave holders in the United States, started arriving as early as the 1820s and 1830s. The land was not surveyed at that point in time, so the settlers basically squatted on the land, clearing it and farming it.

The land and the road were surveyed 1848. Crown Patents were granted along the road thereafter. To qualify for the patents settlers had to clear 5 acres of land and build a log cabin that was at least 16' by 20'. Many of the Black settlers became property owners and some were tenants on land owned by others.

The first census was taken in 1851 and it recorded what was already a well-established community. In the new township of Artemesia, there were 118 Black settlers: men, women and children. Along the Durham Road, Black settlers included the Simons, Workman, Brown, Black, Handy and Washington families.

The next decade brought more refugees from the United States, such as Edward Patterson and John Meads. The men were either labourers or farmers. The marginal quality of the land meant that many of these men looked elsewhere for work, leaving the farming in the hands of their wives and children.

The land in this part of Grey County is glacial till: gravel and stones, hills and hummocks, with lots of water in small lakes, rivers, streams and marshland. And of course, it was then covered by forest, filled with massive trees: maple, beech, basswood, elm, birch, hemlock, pine, spruce and cedar.