1851 Correspondence to George Snider, Crown Land Agent: Petition from Artemesia Township Black Settlers

Last November, the Archives was fortunate to receive an extensive collection of letters, donated by Bill Henry. The collection includes a variety of authors and recipients, but the bulk are circa 1850s correspondence to George Snider. Snider assumed a number of roles in the formative years of the County, including Grey County Sheriff, Owen Sound Mayor, and Member of Parliament for Grey North. However, the feature correspondence for this blog, in honour of February being Black History Month, stems from George Snider’s role in the 1850s as Crown Land Agent. Grey County was provisionally established in 1852. Looking back, the mid-1850s in this region can be considered to be both a time of opportunity and turbulence. Land was opened for settlement, but at the same time there was an influx of people and jockeying for property. It is important to note that this particular petition is being featured primarily because it provides names of Black settlers in Artemesia, but that other circumstances of conflict in other townships and between other settlers also existed. A transcript of the letter is included for ease of reading along with the original below.

A letter written to Mr. George Snider, Government Agent:

27 February 1851

Sir

Mr. George Snider Government agent

Sir we as a body of colourd (sic) people we Pettion (sic) to your honour in order that you will prevent a man of colour by the Name of charles maloney from having agrant (sic) of land in the town ship of artemesia the reason that we Pettion to your honour is that this man is a bad man in the Neighbourhood this man is known by us in the Queens bush the agent Mr. Jackson on the account of this refused to let this Man have agrant of Land/ Sir your pettioners’ll ever pray

John W Levi

Dorsey ambush

James (?) Handay

Larken Mark alverson

John Brown

David mason

Lewis howard

James Jackson

Philloman workman

Lemuel brown

John Johnson

Levi Johnson

Chancey Simons

Gabriel Black

franklin crawford

James handy