Owen Sound has long been known as the “last terminal” on the Underground Railroad. A port on Georgian Bay, it offered a safe haven for slaves escaping from the plantations of the American south. A destination of choice for those fleeing bondage, it was relatively free from bounty hunters who did not often travel that far north in search of escaped slaves. Even so, Owen Sound newspapers of the time reported a series of unpleasant confrontations between bounty hunters and local residents.
Owen Sound and the surrounding farm country were just being opened for settlement in the 1840s and, for the first time, former slaves had the opportunity to own property and settle on farms in Grey County. Sad to say, white settlers bumped many black families who had settled on area farmland, sending them to Owen Sound where they found work and homes.
In 1843, Owen Sound’s first and most famous Black resident, John “Daddy” Hall, arrived on the side-wheeler Ploughboy. The village of Sydenham, as Owen Sound was then known, was only a few years old. Hall and several other Black families, resided on the heavily wooden east hill, later to be known as the Pleasure Grounds and now, part of Victoria Park.
Blacks in Owen Sound were employed as porters and bellmen in hotels and on trains, as labourers, sailors, cooks, storekeepers, teamsters, barbers, whitewashers, confectioners, farmhands, butchers, maids, masons and stonecutters. According to the 1871 census, 672 Blacks lived in Owen Sound, making up ten per cent of the town’s population. Today, only a handful of Black families make Owen Sound their home.
Originally aired February 6th 2016
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