What an interesting, beautiful, hope-filled place the Elgin Settlement and Buxton Mission of Raleigh was and is. Founded in 1849 by a white Presbyterian minister named Reverend William King, the Settlement was first shared by Reverend King, fifteen slaves whom he had inherited through his wife, and six escaped slaves who awaited them. Reverend King felt there was nowhere in the United States that these African-American slaves could truly know liberty, so he purchased a three-mile by six-mile plot of land in southern Ontario on which he and the freed slaves could live. The population of Buxton at its height ranged from an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 escaped and freed people. Though there were a few other settlements of refugees from slavery in Canada at that time, Buxton proved to be the one that thrived. Even into the twenty-first century, several hundred descendants of the original settlers still live in the area, farming the land their ancestors hewed from the once thick Canadian forest.

The relative success of Buxton can be attributed to two things: First is the will, determination, courage, and sheer appreciation of freedom that steeled the spines of the newly freed, largely African-American residents. In the face of great opposition by some Canadians, they fought and worked hard to maintain the promise of the North Star. They took themselves from the horrors of southern American slavery into the land of the free, Canada. Every day they awoke was filled with hardship, every day they awoke was filled with the joy of freedom. In Legacy to Buxton, a detailed history of the Settlement, author A. C. Robbins cites a Paul Laurence Dunbar poem to describe these brave people, and I can’t think of a more fitting tribute:

 

Not they who soar, but they who plod

Their rugged way, unhelped, to God

Are heroes; …

Not they who soar.

 

The second reason the Buxton Settlement thrived is the set of strict rules that were instituted by Reverend King. People who chose to live within the Settlement’s boundaries were required to purchase, with the assistance of very low interest loans, a minimum of fifty acres of land which they had to clear and drain. Their homes had to be a certain size with a minimum of four rooms and were set thirty-three feet from the road. The front of each home was to be planted with a flower garden and the back was to have a vegetable garden or truck patch.

Economically, Buxton was fiercely and deliberately self-sufficient and eventually had its own sawmill, potash mill, brickyard, post office, hotel, and school. There was even a six-mile-long tram that carried lumber from Buxton down to Lake Erie, where it was loaded on ships to be sold throughout North America. Buxton’s school developed such a sterling reputation that many white families in the area withdrew their children from the local government schools and sent them to the Academy at Buxton instead. Many Native Canadian children also were educated at the school.

While I have fictionalized some aspects of Elijah of Buxton, much of the story is based on fact. Although there is no record of a terrible accident, Frederick Douglass actually did visit Buxton, as did abolitionist John Brown, though not at the same time. One of Buxton’s earliest inhabitants, a young girl, made the journey to freedom in the same way Elijah’s ma did, by escaping from her mistress on her second trip to Detroit. The Liberty Bell was indeed rung whenever a newly freed person reached the Settlement. This five-hundred-pound brass bell was cast in Pittsburgh in 1850, and was paid for by the pennies, nickels, and dollars saved by former slaves as a tribute to the people of Buxton.

Unfortunately, during the 1920s the church that houses the Liberty Bell was sold, and today the bell remains in a completely enclosed tower, not seen by anyone. The Canadian government recently donated a generous $20,000 for a replica of the bell to be made and placed on the grounds of the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum, but the casting had to be done through estimates. It is my hope that the Liberty Bell will someday again let freedom ring over all of Buxton. To learn more about the bell, visit my Web site, www.nobodybutcurtis.com.

I strongly recommend taking a trip to North Buxton. It’s almost impossible not to be deeply moved while looking out on fields that were cleared by people who risked their lives for the dream of freedom. It’s almost impossible not to feel a sense of joy that is a tiny fraction of the joy former slaves must have felt when they first saw the school at Buxton. A place where their children would be learning everything from simple addition and subtraction to calculus, everything from English to Greek. It is almost impossible not to look to the Buxton sky, be it rainy or sunshiny, and think, “Ain’t that the most beautifullest sky you ever seen?”

Go to the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum and get a feel for what life in Buxton was like a century and a half ago. The museum’s publication Something to Hope For is a fascinating overview of Buxton’s history. An actual original cabin and the original schoolhouse on which I based places in Elijah of Buxton still exist on the grounds of the museum, along with the original cemetery. A huge celebration is held in Buxton every Labour Day when more than 3,000 descendants of former slaves from all over the United States and Canada come to celebrate and honor their ancestors.

Buxton is an inspiration, and its importance in both American and Canadian history deserves to be much more recognized. I feel so honored to have been able to set my novel in such a beautiful place.

 

Christopher Paul Curtis

Windsor, Ontario

March 2007