Murphy Browne © February 10-2020
SELLING
PEGGY AND JUPITER: FEBRUARY 10, 1806
TO
BE SOLD
A
BLACK WOMAN, named Peggy, aged about forty years; and a Black boy her son,
named JUPITER aged about fifteen years, both of them the property of the
subscriber.
The
woman is a tolerable cook and washer woman and perfectly understands making
soap and candles.
The
boy is tall and strong of his age, and has been employed in County business,
but brought up principally as a House Servant - They are each of them Servants
for life. The price for the Woman is one hundred and fifty Dollars - for the
Boy two hundred Dollars, payable in three years with interest from the day of
Sale and to be properly secured by Bond &c. - But one fourth less will be
taken in ready Money.
PETER
RUSSELL
York,
Feb. 10th, 1806
Peter
Russell was the successor of his friend and colleague Lieutenant Governor John
Graves Simcoe. When ill health forced Simcoe to leave Upper Canada (Ontario),
Russell was appointed the provincial administrator. Russell was a member of the
Executive Council of Ontario and the “Family Compact” (small group of officials
who dominated the executive and legislative councils, senior bureaucratic
positions and the judiciary of Upper Canada until the 1830s) before he was
appointed provincial administrator in July 1796. He remained acting in the
position of administrator until 1799 when Simcoe's permanent replacement,
Lieutenant Governor (Peter Hunter) was appointed. Russell and his sister
Elizabeth were also slave owners who for many years enslaved Peggy, her son
Jupiter and her two daughters, Amy and Milly, even though Peggy was married to
a free African Canadian man, Mr. Pompadour. The law designated that children
born of enslaved African women were also enslaved at birth even if (as in many
cases) the children were sired by the white owners of the enslaved women. Since
Peggy was the property of Peter Russell and his sister Elizabeth, her children
at birth automatically became the Russell’s property.
Peggy
occasionally practiced what Dr Verene Shepherd in her book “I Want To Disturb
My Neighbour: Lectures on Slavery, Emancipation and Postcolonial Jamaica” terms
“petticoat rebellion.” Dr. Shepherd writes that the term was first used by
Matthew Gregory Lewis, the owner of Cornwall estate in western Jamaica in a
January 26, 1816 entry in his diary as he described the resistance of an
enslaved African woman who when confronted by an abusive overseer on the
plantation: “flew at his throat, and endeavoured to strangle him.” Although
Peggy Pompadour in Upper Canada was never accused of physically defending
herself or her children against the brutal slave system they endured, she and
her son were accused of and were punished for being “insolent.” Peggy and
Jupiter occasionally left the Russell’s property to assert some form of
ownership over their own bodies, as a form of their resistance to their
enslavement. On one occasion a notice from Peter Russell appeared on September
2, 1803 in the Upper Canada Gazette stating: "The subscriber’s black
servant Peggy not having his permission to absent herself from his service, the
public are hereby cautioned from employing or harbouring her without the
owner’s leave. Whoever will do so after this notice may expect to be treated as
the law directs."
The
lives of Peggy, Jupiter and Peggy’s younger children Amy and Milly were not an
anomaly in Canada. Even though Canada was the destination of thousands of
enslaved Africans fleeing their enslaved status in the USA, slavery was also
practiced in Canada. The first named enslaved African to reside in Canada was a
six-year old boy who was kidnapped from his home in Madagascar and was first
owned by David Kirke in 1628. The child was sold several times, was baptized
Catholic and given the name Olivier Le Jeune; one of his owners was Father Paul
Le Jeune. There is no record of the African name of the kidnapped and enslaved
child renamed Olivier Le Jeune by his enslavers.
The
infamous 1806 advertisement offering Peggy and Jupiter Pompadour for sale is
proof that slavery was a Canadian institution. Although our history did not
begin with slavery the enslavement of our ancestors is very much a part of our
history and affects how the descendants of those enslaved Africans are treated
today wherever they live. It affects how they think, how they behave how they
view themselves and others who look like them. It also affects how they are
treated in places like Canada where the people in power are White and their
mindset is influenced by that history. Slavery in Canada was just as brutal and
dreadful as slavery in Brazil, Cuba or the USA. Enslaved Africans were sold
away from their families, were beaten to death, enslaved women were raped by
their owners, their owners’ relatives, colleagues and friends. Thomas
Thistlewood documented his systematic rape of enslaved African females on his
plantation in Jamaica. His diary was published in the book “In Miserable
Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica 1750-1786” by Douglas Hall. Thistlewood
like Russell left England to seek his fortune in the “colonies.” While he went
to Jamaica, Russell came to Canada. Unlike Thistlewood, Russell did not leave a
diary of his abuse of the Africans he held in slavery; although his sister
Elizabeth did keep a diary of sorts (housed at the Baldwin Room, Toronto Public
Library.) In her 2007 published book “The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold
story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal,” Dr Afua Cooper
surmises on page 96; “Who knows what was going on in the Russell household that
led Peggy to run from it. Was she sexually abused by either owner? It seems
that her relationship with Elizabeth Russell in particular was strained.”
Enslaved Africans were regularly advertised for sale in the Upper Canada
Gazette. When Peter Russell died in 1808, his sister Elizabeth inherited his
property including the Pompadour family, Peggy and her children. Elizabeth
Russell eventually gave away Peggy’s child Amy to her goddaughter Elizabeth
Denison as a gift.
One
of the most well-known life stories of an enslaved person in Canada is that of
Marie Joseph Angelique. Her life story is documented in Dr. Afua Cooper’s 2007
published book “The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold story of Canadian Slavery
and the Burning of Old Montreal.” Marie Joseph Angelique was an enslaved
African woman who had been born in Portugal but sold a few times before ending
up in Montreal as the property of Quebecois merchant Francois Poulin de
Francheville and his wife. After his death de Francheville’s widow planned to
sell Angelique again. She had already been sold from her birthplace in
Portugal, to the USA then to New France (Quebec.) In the space of a few short
years she had to learn English (in the USA) and French (in Quebec). Enslaved
people were brutally beaten when they did not understand the language of their
enslavers and needed time to decipher instructions, commands and demands made
in the strange new language. Angelique was accused of setting fire to her
owner's home to cover her attempted escape from the de Francheville widow on
April 10, 1734. Raging out of control the fire destroyed forty-six buildings.
Angelique fled during the commotion of the efforts to contain the blaze but she
was hunted and captured. She was tried, found guilty and sentenced to have her
hand cut off before being burned alive. The sentence was reduced to hanging and
burning. On June 21, 1734, she was tortured until she confessed, she was driven
through the streets of Montreal in a rubbish cart, then publicly executed by
hanging, her body was burned and her ashes scattered in Montreal. She was 29
years old.
The
lives of enslaved Africans like Peggy Pompadour, her son Jupiter and Marie
Joseph Angelique are part of Canadian history that is becoming better known. In
the 1980s when I bought Daniel G. Hill’s book “The Freedom Seekers” the stories
were not as well known. During this month; African Heritage/Black History Month
and this United Nations declared “Decade for People of African Descent” (2015-2024)
we need to read and educate ourselves, our children, family, friends,
colleagues, co-workers about our history. Our history did not begin with
slavery but we did suffer four hundred years of enslavement and disconnection
from our roots and the effects are felt to this day.
On
August 24, 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed by the British Parliament
and became law on August 1, 1834. The mindset that allowed Africans fleeing
slavery from the USA to be free once they reached Canada and continued to allow
enslaved Africans in Canada to remain in bondage until August 1, 1834 when
slavery was abolished by the British Parliament is still in operation today.
The
police celebrate “Black History Month” with great pomp and ceremony yet are
guilty of racial profiling and in some cases horrible brutality of African
Canadians. The ongoing case of a white police officer accused of brutally
beating an African Canadian youth, causing the youth to lose an eye, is a case
in point. Police officers in some areas regularly play basketball games with
African Canadian youth yet in those same areas will target and brutalise
African Canadian youth. The more things change the more they remain the same.
Peggy
Pompadour, her son Jupiter and her two little girls, Amy and Milly, lived and
toiled in the Russell household. Yet Peter Russell and his sister Elizabeth
just viewed them as property, to be brutalized, gifted and sold.
Murphy Browne © February 10-2020
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