Two hundred and fifteen years ago, on February 10, 1806 a 40-year-old enslaved African woman and her 15-year-old son were advertised for sale in the Upper Canada Gazette, an Ontario publication. Peggy Pompadour, her son Jupiter and her two younger daughters Amy and Milly were enslaved by the ruler of Ontario (Upper Canada,) Peter Russell and his sister Elizabeth Russell. The Russells lived at a town home “Russell Abbey” on King Street between Sherbourne and Princess (now 255 King Street East), built of timber from German Mills, Ontario. Russell died in 1808 and his sister died in 1822.
Murphy Browne © Thursday, February 10, 2011
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 at one point considered 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 as 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 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.
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: Blacks in Early Canada the stories were not as well known. During this month; African Heritage/Black History Month and this year, the United Nations declared International Year for People of African Descent (IYPAD) 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. 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.
Murphy Browne © Thursday, February 10, 2011
