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The Solomon Moseby Affair 1837
On April 28, 2022, the Ontario Heritage Trust unveiled an updated provincial plaque in Toronto, Ontario, to commemorate The Solomon Moseby Affair, 1837. Updating this plaque is part of the ongoing work of the Trust to tell Ontario’s stories in an honest, authentic and inclusive way.
The bilingual plaque reads as follows:
THE SOLOMON MOSEBY AFFAIR 1837
The second courthouse and jail of the Niagara District was erected at this site in 1817. Several high-profile cases were tried here, including that of African-American freedom seeker Solomon Moseby. In the spring of 1837, Moseby stole his enslaver’s horse and escaped, settling in Niagara. A few weeks later, his new-found freedom was threatened when his enslaver arrived with an arrest warrant and extradition papers. Moseby was detained at this jail while awaiting an extradition decision. Over 200 Black community supporters mobilized and camped outside to protest Moseby’s possible return to slavery and harsh punishment in the United States. When the extradition order was given, the protestors obstructed Moseby’s removal. Two Black residents, Herbert Holmes and Jacob Green, were killed. Moseby escaped, fled to England, and later returned to live in Niagara. For African Canadians, this was not simply about justice for one man. If Moseby’s enslaver had succeeded, they could all be vulnerable to extradition and re-enslavement. This incident helped to establish Canadian extradition and refugee policies that are still used today.
L'AFFAIRE SOLOMON MOSEBY, 1837
C'est à cet endroit que furent érigés, en 1817, le deuxième palais de justice et la prison du district de Niagara. Plusieurs affaires très médiatisées y ont été jugées, notamment celle de Solomon Moseby, un ancien esclave afro-américain en quête de liberté. Au printemps 1837, Solomon Moseby vole le cheval de son esclavagiste et s’échappe, pour s’installer ensuite à Niagara. Quelques semaines plus tard, sa liberté fraîchement acquise est menacée lorsque son esclavagiste se présente avec un mandat d'arrêt et des documents pour demander son extradition. Solomon Moseby est alors détenu dans cette prison dans l'attente d'une décision d'extradition. Plus de 200 sympathisants de la communauté noire se mobilisent et campent à l'extérieur de la prison pour protester contre un éventuel retour de Solomon Moseby à sa condition d’esclave et la punition sévère qui l’attend aux États-Unis. Lorsque l'ordre d'extradition est émis, les manifestants font obstacle à l'expulsion de Solomon Moseby. Deux résidents noirs, Herbert Holmes et Jacob Green, sont tués. Solomon Moseby parvient à s’échapper. Il s’enfuit en Angleterre et revient vivre à Niagara quelques années plus tard. Pour les Afro-Canadiens, cette affaire ne concernait pas seulement la justice rendue à un seul homme. Si l'esclavagiste de Solomon Moseby était parvenu à ses fins, ils risquaient tous d'être extradés et de redevenir des esclaves. Cette affaire a contribué à l'adoption des politiques canadiennes en matière d'extradition et de protection des réfugiés, qui sont toujours en vigueur de nos jours.
Historical background
The second Niagara courthouse and gaol (jail) complex was erected in 1817. It served the Niagara District that was created in 1798 from the Home District and consisted of two counties on the Niagara peninsula – Haldimand County on the north shore of Lake Erie and comprising part of the Grand River Tract granted to the Six Nations in 1784, and Lincoln County, which included most of the Niagara Peninsula and extended west as far as Ancaster Township.1 It replaced the first courthouse constructed in 1795 at King and Prideaux streets (present-day location of Bernard Gray Hall Bed and Breakfast). The first courthouse was a simple blockhouse building. It was burned down by American troops in 1813 during the War of 1812 and resulted in the loss of 300 lives of prisoners held at the facility.
Built near Rye and Cottage streets, the second courthouse was considered to be one of the finest public buildings in the province at that time. It was constructed of red brick with a stylish woodwork interior. The Niagara Jail was the only place of incarceration for criminals in the district until the Kingston Penitentiary opened in 1835.2 In Travels Through Part of the United States and Canada in 1818 and 1819, Scottish traveller John Duncan describes the gaol at Niagara:
"Niagara is possessed of a court house and jail; both under one roof. The jail is on the lower floor. The cells, both for criminals and debtors, surround and open from the hall, which leads to the court-room, and the guilty or unfortunate inmates are exposed to the gaze of everyone whom curiosity or idleness induces to enter. The partitions and doors of the various cells are composed of strong pieces of oak firmly bolted together; the doors are about nine inches thick, consisting of two thicknesses of wood with sheet-iron between them. Some of the debtors' apartments have a small window to the outside, but the criminals have no light but from a small semicircular opening in the door. The debtors have fire places, but the criminals have only the miserable comfort of looking out at a stove in the middle of the hall, from which no perceptible warmth can reach their dismal abodes. It must be truly dreadful to pass a Canadian winter in such a place. How miserably does this prison contrast with those in the United States!"3
The jail was the site of a number of historically significant events. It was the scene of Robert Gourlay's imprisonment in 1819. Robert Fleming Gourlay, a Scottish British subject, arrived in Upper Canada in 1817 to deal with the 350-hectare (866-acre) property that his wife Jean inherited in Dereham Township, Oxford County. Due to provincial legislative rules that banned American immigrants from selling land, Gourlay did not have access to the money that was tied up in his wife’s land, as he anticipated. He unleashed harsh criticism of the government in columns in the Niagara Spectator newspaper. While touring settlements in the colony during the summer of 1818 to garner support for government reform, Gourlay was charged with seditious libel in Kingston and Cornwall.4 He was tried in Kingston and Brockville and in both cases, he was found innocent. Gourlay continued to malign the politicians and, at the end of that year, was ordered to leave the province. Gourlay refused to leave and was subsequently committed to the Niagara Jail on January 4, 1819, to await trial for disobeying a legal order to leave the province. He remained incarcerated until August 20. At his trial, it was determined that Gourlay’s mental health had deteriorated. The following day, Gourlay was banished from the province and left for New York. The editor of the Niagara Spectator, Bartemus Ferguson, who published Gourlay’s attacks against the government was also “confined in the Niagara jail, tried for sedition and sentenced to pay a fine of £50, to be imprisoned in jail for eighteen months, to stand in the public pillory one hour, to give security for seven years for the sum of £1000 and to remain in prison till the fine be paid and security given.”5
The second major event connected to the Niagara jail was the sensational Solomon Moseby Affair in 1837. In the spring of 1837, an enslaved African American named Solomon Moseby took his enslaver’s horse and escaped. He settled in Niagara. A few weeks later, his new-found freedom was threatened. Here, the report on Solomon Moseby that is part of the project Breaking the Chains: Presenting a New Narrative for Canada’s Role in the Underground Railroad, is reproduced to provide a detailed, accurate account:6
Solomon Moseby was thrust into the centre of a dispute that mobilized African Canadians in the Niagara area and beyond and raised the question of whether Canada was truly a safe haven for those fleeing from US slavery. Four years before Moseby’s arrival, Upper Canada had passed the Fugitive Offenders Act, “an act to provide for the apprehending of fugitive offenders from foreign countries and delivering them up to justice.” Under this Act, anyone living in what is now Ontario who was accused of committing a serious crime in another country could be extradited for trial in that country. “Serious crimes” were those that in Canada would be punished by death, corporal punishment or imprisonment with hard labour. In August 1837, Solomon Moseby’s former owner, David Castleman, arrived in Niagara with three associates. Castleman carried a warrant for Moseby’s arrest, issued in Kentucky, and a request for his extradition to Kentucky for trial. Two men, Daniel Kelly and David Castleman, swore before a Niagara Justice of the Peace that on May 14, 1837, Solomon Moseby had stolen a horse belonging to Castleman, who was a well-known horse breeder and landowner who lived near Lexington, Kentucky. A warrant was then issued in Niagara for Moseby’s arrest and Solomon was taken into custody.7 Legal papers were forwarded to Toronto requesting that Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head sign an extradition order.
The Niagara authorities saw this as a simple task of returning an alleged felon for trial in the place where the crime had been committed. For Solomon Moseby, though, it would mean a return to slavery, and brutal punishment for the “crime” of escaping. African Canadians in Niagara feared the wider implications; many of them had fled slavery themselves. If Moseby was returned to the United States to stand trial for his alleged crimes, then any fugitive living in Canada could be falsely accused and extradited. A petition (dated September 2, 1837) to the Lieutenant Governor from “Persons of Colour, residents of the Town and Township of Niagara” explained the issue:
Solomon Moseby a man of Colour, made his Escape from Slavery in the State of Kentucky … and availed himself of the protection of the British Laws in Canada to retain that Freedom he had now acquired … [The petitioners] declare their Solemn, and sincere belief that the accusation which is now set up against our poor Coloured Brother is nothing more than a mere pretence to secure him across the line of demarkation [sic], and from under the protection of the British Laws and institution, and the moment he lands on the other side of the Niagara river the charge of Horse-stealing would be withdrawn, and him dragg [sic] off once more to irremidiable [sic] Slavery.8
They had attempted to pay Solomon’s erstwhile owner his purchase price in order to secure his freedom. To the petitioners, the fact that Castleman had “refused 1,000 dollars for [Moseby] in the presence of Alexander Stewart Esqr Barrister at Law” proved what a valuable commodity Moseby was to him.9
One hundred and seventeen white “Inhabitants of the Town of Niagara” also signed a petition “respecting Solomon Moseby the fugitive Slave,”10 arguing that:
It is the opinion of Your Petitioners that neither morally nor legally can a slave be guilty of the offence charged against him, not being a free agent; that it is notorious beyond all doubt that the man claimed was a Slave when he left Kentucky; that he is now a freeman by the constitutional laws of Great Britain; and that should he be given up, he will inevitably go back to Slavery, there to be tortured as an example.11
The petitioners also believed that it was David Castleman’s intention to test Canadian law and find a way to make it easier for American slaveholders to retrieve freedom seekers. They wrote:
That it will become a precedent whereby no runaway slave will either now or henceforth be safe in a British Colony. Your Petitioners do therefore pray that your Excellency will reconsider your decision, and that if you cannot conscientiously release the man that you will transmit the case to the Home Government for their consideration.12
Moseby’s lawyer, Alexander Stewart, wrote to Lieutenant Governor Bond Head on September 5, explaining that this case needed a special interpretation of the Upper Canada Fugitive Offenders Act of 1833. There had already been earlier cases in which the fugitive slaves had been allowed to remain in Canada, including the Blackburn Case of June 1833, where Kentucky refugees Thornton and Lucie Blackburn had been accused of trumped-up charges in order to secure their extradition. In his letter, Stewart wondered, “how far our statute passed in 1833 ever contemplated the protection of the barbarous trafic [sic] in human flesh.” He noted that, if returned to Kentucky, Moseby would not be imprisoned because “the Labour of the slave is as much the property of the Master as that of his horse” and only in extreme crimes can the State “deprive the Master of his property in his Slave.”13
In Kentucky, Moseby would be neither tried nor punished for horse theft but would be returned to slavery. Stewart noted that there had been so many slaves escaping to Upper Canada recently, “that Slave holders are seriously alarmed.” He believed that the charge of horse theft brought against Moseby was “a mere pretext to obtain his servitude in vile bondage.” He went on to say that it was “preposterous” to believe that four men would incur $400 or more in expenses, and travel 2,400 km (1,500 miles) for a $150 horse.14
Stewart reminded the Lieutenant Governor that there was a loophole in the law. The 1833 Act did provide for exceptions: “Fortunately the last action of the Statute arms His Excellency with a power of discretion.”15 In Toronto, however, Attorney General Christopher A. Hagerman believed that Moseby’s alleged crime fit the Fugitive Offenders Act, as horse stealing was a capital offence in Canada. He did not seem to have seen (or paid attention to) the communications from Niagara. White abolitionist Hiram Wilson wrote, “I was sorry … to perceive that [Hagerman] made no distinction between the offense of a slave in taking his master’s horse, and that of a freeman, in appropriating to his selfish purposes a like amount of property belonging to his neighbour.”16
It may be that Toronto authorities were too preoccupied with other problems – the rumours and unrest that would lead to the Upper Canada Rebellion – to pay careful attention to one legal case in Niagara. Hagerman recommended that Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head sign the extradition warrant to hand Moseby over to the American authorities. Bond Head complied, at the same time requesting direction from legal authorities in England. Bond Head’s reply to the Niagara petitioners was published later in the St. Catharines Journal:
It is true, that a Slave in the United States is not a free agent, and that he becomes so the instant he arrives in Upper Canada; but in obtaining freedom, he becomes also responsible for his conduct, like other free men. British law gives him as much freedom as belongs to British subjects, but no more. This land of liberty cannot be made an asylum for the guilty of any colour. The individual in question has been proved to have been guilty of recent felony. I believe him to have committed it, and I have reason to believe that you are of that opinion. Under these circumstances, I cannot, on account of his colour, conscientiously refuse to deliver him up to the American authorities.17
On September 7, Castleman, Moseby’s former owner, made his way to Hamilton, and submitted a similar warrant for the arrest and extradition of another Kentucky fugitive, Jesse Happy. Again, the alleged crime was horse theft, but Happy’s particular offence had supposedly taken place four years earlier. In this case, Attorney General Hagerman felt that the delay in the Kentuckian’s prosecuting of Happy looked suspicious. The two cases were dealt with separately: Moseby was seen as a recent criminal who must be sent to trial, Happy as a man who would suffer the unjust punishment of slavery if returned.
In Niagara, an anxious group of supporters had gathered outside the jail as soon as Moseby was arrested. Herbert Holmes, a Black preacher and teacher, and Sally Carter, a Black female community leader, “gave the alarm to all their comrades on the Niagara frontier and called on them to come to the rescue at once, and nobly they responded.”18 Soon, there was a Black encampment around the jail, determined that Moseby should not be returned to slavery. White supporters may not have been so evident, but they helped by providing food and supplies for travellers.
It was a peaceful protest in which the women had a leading role, persuading the men not to carry weapons. “They were quite unarmed,” reported writer Anna Brownell Jameson, “and declared their intention not to commit any violence against the English law.” The initial plan had been to raise enough money to cover the price of the stolen horse and have the charges against Moseby dropped. They were determined “to do no illegal violence, but to lose their lives rather than see their comrade taken by force across the lines.”19
According to Hiram Wilson, “Castleman tried to negotiate with the captains of the Hamilton and Transit (steamboats) to carry Moseby across the line [border]; but they promptly and wisely refused to disgrace their boats by employing them in business so mean.”20 Sixty years later, another eyewitness remembered, “[Deputy Sheriff] McLeod wished Capt. Richardson of the Canada to take Moseby to Lewiston in his vessel, and received for an answer a reply, forcible and somewhat profane … that no vessel commanded by him would be used to convey a man back to slavery.”21
On September 12, documentation arrived from Toronto instructing the sheriff to turn Moseby over to the American authorities. Deputy Sheriff McLeod brought in soldiers for additional security. There was a delay when news came that Bond Head was reconsidering his decision. But soon another order came for the prisoner to be taken to the Niagara Ferry, and over to Lewiston.
Numbers vary according to source, but between 200 and 400 African Canadians were gathered at the jail. (The resident Black population of Niagara at the time was about 400.)22 This “blockading army” made its plans.23 The women stood on the bridge over the swampy approach to the jail, blocking the road and singing hymns. They would cause a diversion, giving Moseby a chance to escape.24
One woman remembered later:
[O]ur people were worked up till they said they would “live with him or die with him.” Yes, do or die, that’s what they said, and they went up on that day, crowds and crowds, and the sheriff, that was McLeod, and the constables and soldiers, and the people, and children and the white people, crowds and crowds.25
They were armed with all kinds of weapons: pitchforks, flails, sticks, stones. One woman had a large stone in her stocking, and many had their aprons full of stones, and threw them, too. The constables had muskets.26 Deputy Sheriff McLeod read the Riot Act to the angry throng, ordering them to disperse. A child eyewitness remembered 60 years later:
[M]other took us up on the top of our house, and we could hear the screaming and the screeching and the firing. Ephraim Wheeler was the jailer, and the sheriff went up and down slashing with his sword and keeping the people back.27
As the wagon with Solomon Moseby left the jail yard, Herbert Holmes, one of the leaders and a local schoolteacher, grabbed the reins of one of the horses. Another Black supporter, Jacob Green, pushed a fence rail through the wheel to stop the wagon. Then McLeod gave the order to fire, and Holmes was hit. Green was stabbed with a bayonet. Both died from their injuries. Two others were badly wounded. In the fracas, Moseby escaped.
[The women threw] themselves fearlessly between the Black men and the whites, who, of course, shrank from injuring them. One woman had seized the sheriff, and held him pinioned in her arms; another, on one of the artillerymen presenting his piece and swearing that he would shoot her if she did not get out of his way, gave him only one glance of unutterable contempt, and with one hand knocking up his piece, and collaring him with the other, held him in such a manner as to prevent his firing.28 Afterwards, Mrs. Jameson interviewed one of the women, Sally Carter. Events had clearly shaken her faith in Canada:
I asked her if she was happy here in Canada? She hesitated a moment, and then replied, on my repeating the question, "Yes – that is, I was happy here – but now – I don't know – I thought we were safe here – I thought nothing could touch us here, on your British ground, but it seems I was mistaken, and if so, I won't stay here – I won't – I won't!29
Many were arrested, but only six Black men and four white were brought to trial. Most of the male rioters were granted their freedom if they served in the militia, which was being raised to put down the Upper Canada Rebellion.30 Solomon Moseby did not feel safe in Canada, so he went to England. According to a resident of Niagara:
After some years Solomon Moseby came back, and meanwhile his wife had come here. They met in Mr. – house, but at first they hardly knew one another, but it was a sight to see the tears streaming down their faces with joy …31
The rest of their lives, the Mosebys lived in St. Catharines and Niagara.32
Debate in Canadian newspapers covered the spectrum of opinion. An article entitled “Mobocracy” in the St. Catharines Journal criticized those involved in the escape, asserting that they were “violating the laws and ordinances of the country which affords an asylum for the oppressed of their race.” The writer blamed the participants for “the enormity of the crime of resisting the officers of the law, in the performance of their duty.”33 On the other hand, the Niagara Reporter said that the crowd “forbore with Christian fortitude, exclaiming, ‘Don’t hurt the poor soldiers.’”34 The incident raised an important principle for lawmakers: should Canada extradite an alleged criminal when the punishment he or she would receive is more severe than if he or she were tried in Canada? The outcome of his decision regarding Moseby must have given Bond Head pause for thought, because he wrote to the Colonial Office in Britain, “giving up a slave for trial to American law is, in fact, giving him back to his former master.” Until American law allowed the accused fugitive to be returned to Upper Canada after trial, “we are justified in refusing to give him up.”35 After considering the issue, the Colonial Office noted that where false charges were brought against someone in Upper Canada, the accuser was liable to prosecution for perjury. The charges brought by a slaveholder should first be proven in a Canadian court before an accused fugitive could be handed over to American authorities, thus making the accuser liable to Canadian perjury laws.36
With no clearly enacted legislation covering the protection of fugitive slaves, African Canadians continued to be apprehensive about their safety in Canada. At a “Great Meeting of the Coloured Population at Ancaster” in March 1840, they enlisted the help of white abolitionist Dr. Thomas Rolph to explain the situation to anti-slavery groups and lawmakers in England. At the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, he presented the concerns of African Canadians regarding extradition. Rolph himself had been corresponding with the government, “trying to obtain protection for the coloured race in Canada, but he almost despaired of success.”37 In 1842, however, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty between Britain and the United States removed horse theft from the list of extraditable offences, in part due to Rolph’s persistence.
To African Canadians in the late summer of 1837, this was not simply a matter of obtaining justice for one man. If Castleman had succeeded in having his former “property” returned to Kentucky, then they would all have been vulnerable to extradition to the United States (and re-enslavement) for real or trumped-up charges. The Moseby case drew attention to a major flaw in the 1833 Fugitive Offenders Act: extradition could lead to a punishment in another country that exceeded that in Canada for the same crime. This law had been tested in 1833 in the case of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, fugitive slaves from Kentucky who were falsely accused of crimes by their Kentucky owners. They were freed to start new lives in Canada. The fugitive slave cases, such as the Moseby case, were important principle influences that helped establish Canadian extradition and refugee policies that are still used today.38
By the early 1840s, St. Catharines was discussed as a more suitable choice for the seat of government in the Niagara District. In an attempt to remain the political centre of the district, Niagara embarked on a project to build a new, and third, courthouse. The new building complex included space for a courthouse, offices, jail, town hall and marketplace. From 1847 until 1866, the second courthouse was a jail only. The building was vacant from 1866 until 1869, when Maria Rye purchased it and refurbished it as a home to receive British orphan girls who she arranged to immigrate to Canada. This orphanage was the last use of the facility. Our Western Home was a receiving and distribution home for children from Britain, who became known as the British Home Children.39 Today, the old courthouse site is Rye Street Heritage Park.
The new, third courthouse was constructed around 1847/1848 and served as the official county seat of Niagara District – with courtrooms, meeting rooms and jail cells. It was designed by prominent Toronto architect William Thomas in the neoclassical style and built by Garvie and Co. The three-storey building was distinguished by its projecting frontispiece with a heavily bracketed cornice and pediment, and its main entrance porch with an overhead stone balustrade supported by Doric columns. The window openings on the front elevation are round-headed on the third floor and square-headed on the first and second floors. The second-floor window openings are detailed with pedimented hoods. The corners of the front elevation and the frontispiece have decorative quoins. The interior joinery was carried out by John Davidson. The second-floor courtroom was elaborately designed and decorated with a central domed ceiling.40
In 1863, the seat of judicial power in the Niagara District was moved to St. Catharines. The Niagara District Court House was used as a town hall and now houses the Shaw Theatre.
In 1978, the Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake designated the courthouse under the Ontario Heritage Act and, in 1980, the building was designated a National Historic Site. In 1988, the Ontario Heritage Trust secured a heritage conservation easement on the building. Today, Parks Canada and the Chamber of Commerce use the building for offices.41
The Ontario Heritage Trust gratefully acknowledges the research of Natasha Henry in preparing this paper.
© Ontario Heritage Trust, 2022
1 The Changing Shape of Ontario, Archives of Ontario.
2 David Murray, Colonial Justice, Morality, and Crime in the Niagara District, 1791-1849. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), p.151.
3 John Duncan, Travels through part of the United States and Canada in 1818 and 1819, volume 2, (New York: W. B. Gilley, 1823), pp. 107-108, Google Books.
4 S. F. Wise, “Gourlay, Robert Fleming,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 9, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, accessed December 24, 2021.
5 Ibid, Janet Carnochan, “An Historic House,” Niagara Historical Society Publication No. 13, Niagara Historical Society, 1904, pp. 13-17.
6 Solomon Moseby, Breaking the Chains: Presenting a New Narrative for Canada’s Role in the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Institute, York University, 2013. Reprinted with permission.
7 RG1-E3 [now R10875-5-7-E] Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, Vol. 49, 222-224. Complaint of Daniel Kelly, Blackheath, Erie Co, NY, Niagara, 1 Sep 1837, Complaint of David Castleman, Fayette, Kentucky, 2 Sep 1837, Daniel McDougal, JP, to Donald McDonald, High Constable, Niagara District and Peter Wheeler, Gaoler, 2 Sep 1837; Library and Archives Canada [LAC] microfilm C-6903. Punctuation has been added to some of the document transcriptions to make them easier to read.
8 RG1-E3 [now R10875-5-7-E] Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, Vol. 49, 226-228. Copy of the Petition of the Coloured Inhabitants of the Town and Township of Niagara on behalf of Solomon Moseby the fugitive slave &c., Niagara, 2 September 1837; LAC microfilm C-6903. Please note that punctuation has been added to some of the document transcriptions to make them easier to read.
9 RG1-E3 [now R10875-5-7-E] Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, Vol. 49, 226-228. Copy of the Petition of the Coloured Inhabitants of the Town and Township of Niagara on behalf of Solomon Moseby the fugitive slave &c., Niagara, 2 September 1837; LAC microfilm C-6903.
10 RG1-E3 [now R10875-5-7-E] Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, Vol. 49, 229-232. Copy of the Petition of the Inhabitants of the Town of Niagara respecting Solomon Moseby the fugitive Slave, nd; LAC microfilm C-6903.
11 RG1-E3 [now R10875-5-7-E] Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, Vol. 49, 229-232. Copy of the Petition of the Inhabitants of the Town of Niagara respecting Solomon Moseby the fugitive Slave, nd; LAC microfilm C-6903.
12 RG1-E3 [now R10875-5-7-E] Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, Vol. 49, 229-232. Copy of the Petition of the Inhabitants of the Town of Niagara respecting Solomon Moseby the fugitive Slave, nd; LAC microfilm C-6903.
13 RG1-E3 [now R10875-5-7-E] Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, Vol. 49, pp. 219-221, Alexander Stewart to John Joseph, Niagara 5 Sep 1837; LAC microfilm C-6903.
14 RG1-E3 [now R10875-5-7-E] Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, Vol. 49, pp. 219-221, Alexander Stewart to John Joseph, Niagara 5 Sep 1837; LAC microfilm C-6903.
15 RG1-E3 [now R10875-5-7-E] Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, Vol. 49, pp. 219-221, Alexander Stewart to John Joseph, Niagara 5 Sep 1837; LAC microfilm C-6903.
16 The Friend of Man, 22 Nov 1837, letter from Hiram Wilson dated Niagara, 26 Oct 1837. Online.
17 St. Catharines Journal, Vol II No 28, 28 Sep 1837; AO N77.
18 Janet Carnochan, “Slave Rescue in Niagara, Sixty Years Ago,” Niagara Historical Society No. 2 1897, p. 13.
19 Anna Brownell Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, Vol. II. (London: Saunders and Otley, 1838), p. 45.
20 The Friend of Man, 22 Nov 1837, letter from Hiram Wilson dated Niagara, 26 Oct 1837. Online.
21 Carnochan 1897, p. 14.
22 Carnochan, 1897, p. 10.
23 Carnochan, 1897, p. 14.
24 Ibid.
25 Carnochan, 1897, p. 11.
26 Carnochan, 1897, p. 12.
27 Carnochan, 1897, p. 12.
28 Jameson, 1838, 45; Adrienne Shadd, “The Lord Seemed to Say ‘Go’: Women and the Underground Railroad Movement,” We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History”, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), pp. 59 - 61).
29 Jameson, 1838, p. 47.
30 Karolyn Smardz Frost, I’ve got a Home in Glory Land. (Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2007), p. 244.
31 Carnochan, 1897, p. 12.
32 William Kirby and Petrie, Francis J., Annals of Niagara. (London, Ont.: E. Phelps, 1872), p. 233.
33 St. Catharines Journal, Vol II No 27, 21 Sep 1837; AO N77.
34 Niagara Reporter, Vol. 5 No 17, 14 Sep 1837; AO N023.
35 Head to Lord Glenelg, 8 Oct 1837, quoted in Smardz Frost, 2007, p. 245.
36 Glenelg to Arthur, 9 Mar 1838, Head to Glenelg, 8 Oct 1837, quoted in Smardz Frost, 2007, p. 246.
37 The Patriot, London, 24 June 1840, pp. 4-5.
38 The Patriot, London, 24 June 1840, pp. 4-5.
39 Janet Carnochan, “An Historic House,” Niagara Historical Society Publication No. 13, Niagara Historical Society, 1904, pp. 13-17.
40 Niagara District Court House, Ontario Heritage Trust.
41 Niagara-on-the-Lake (doorsopenontario.on.ca).