His name was never recorded. He was 14 years old when he was listed for sale in the settlement of Shelbourne N.S. in 1786 — one of around a thousand Black people who were enslaved in the Maritimes. With only the evidence of a slave advertisement to go on, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography/Dictionnaire biographique du Canada (DCB/DBC) has reconstructed his story and placed it in a wider context. It will be published next February during Black History Month.
Since 1966, the DCB/DBC has provided fascinating biographical insights into people from all eras and backgrounds. The DCB/DBC recognizes the importance and need to highlight these stories, such as the one mentioned above, as well as include recent scholarship into the lives of Indigenous people, women, racialized communities, and the working classes.
This ambitious work-in-progress, updated weekly online, would not have been possible without the support of friends and donors like you. Thank you!
The work is unfinished and there has never been a greater need for this thorough, authoritative, bilingual, and accessible resource that includes biographical details of “ordinary people” from Canada’s history.
Your gift to DCB/DBC will help maintain our reputation for publishing new online biographies weekly that meet the highest standards of scholarship and continue to draw glowing reviews from our readers.
Update, December 8: Russ Chamberlayne offers some archival sources relevant to the DCB's anonymous fourteen-year old of 1786:
For sale: "A likely Negro Wench, between Ten and Eleven Years of Age, has had the small Pox and Measles[....]": https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=YFjsv_pBGBYC&dat=17860801&printsec=frontpage
British naval officer sells "One Negro Man Named Sambo[...]and also One Brown Mare and her Colt now Sucking" to Truro physician for £40: https://archives.novascotia.ca/africanns/archives/?ID=17
Reward of 40 shillings for return of "Negro Man who answers to the Name of James," is 28 and has "a Nose rather acqueline": https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=YFjsv_pBGBYC&dat=17860801&printsec=frontpage
Missing indented Black man Henry Jones, tanner by trade, "has a remarkable impediment in his speech [and] is very artful": https://archives.novascotia.ca/newspapers/archives/?ID=127&Page=200909074
"Free Negroes" in Manchester, N.S. petition for land, farm tools, clothing, ammunition and boards "we are intitled to" after two years: https://archives.novascotia.ca/africanns/archives/?ID=36
