The Dawn Settlement
© Image used with permission by Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site (Dresden, Ontario) – a site that is
owned and operated by the Ontario Heritage Trust
Runaway slave and Methodist preacher Josiah Henson helped establish the free black
community of Dawn and its manual labor school, the British American Institute, near
Dresden, Ontario in 1842, making it one of the earliest fugitive slave settlements in
Canada. Dawn’s leaders searched for ways to stabilize the town without relying on
white benefactors. Josiah Henson, Hiram Wilson and James Caning Fuller created the
British-American Institute, which provided the community with jobs and its citizens
with income. The school suffered a series of controversies but by the time of its closing,
Dawn had become a self-sustaining settlement.
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The story of the Dawn settlement and the British-American Institute captures
several of the contradictory aspects that informed the mid-eighteenth century
abolitionist movement. Poor and educated only in the skills they brought with them,
early fugitive slaves arriving in Canada faced racial discrimination and alienation,
circumstances that often forced poor black families to rely on restrictive white
philanthropy for support. While Dawn offered sanctuary to black families seeking
refuge in Canada, the community’s viability hinged on the support of white
benefactors who were skeptical of uneducated black leaders like Josiah Henson.
Hiram Wilson, Josiah Henson, and James Canning Fuller conceptualized the British
American Institute in the late 1830s as an effort to promote the “Education Mental
Moral and Physical of the Coloured inhabitants of Canada not excluding white
persons and Indians” (Silverman 54). Wilson was one of the “Lane Rebels” who
abandoned Lane Theological Seminary for Oberlin College after the infamous
abolition debates. After leaving Ohio, he established himself as a leader in the black
education movement in 1836 on behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Fuller
was a Quaker philanthropist from upstate New York who would marshal his Atlantic
connections to raise funds for the proposed school. But it was Josiah Henson who
helped marshal support from Canada’s growing black refugee community. After
Fuller received $1,500 in funds from British abolitionists committed to the cause,
Henson proposed the idea of the manual labor school at a “convention of coloured
people” in 1838, citing white hostility toward interracial schooling in Canada as a
motive (Henson 73, Hartgrove 16). Henson’s reputation as an influential preacher
and forward-looking thinker helped him secure the support for his plan from black
delegates, and in November of 1841 the British-American Institute trustees
purchased 200 acres of land near Chatham, Ontario for $800. Henson moved his
family to the new community of Dawn in 1842 and became the manager of the
school a year later (Henson 75).
The British-American Institute eventually grew to 300 acres and schooled between
60 and 80 students per year in the 1840s. The Dawn community sat adjacent to the
school on a 1,500-acre timber-rich reserve; nearly 500 settlers lived in the
community, many of them black refugees from U.S. slavery (Ripley 106). Together,
settlers at Dawn built a sawmill, enabling them to turn the “black walnut and white
wood” into marketable timber (Henson 74). Dawn also had a grist-mill, brickyard,
and rope-walk, all of which helped Henson and the community offset some of the
costs of clothing and houses offered to incoming refugees (Silverman 55).
Conceived as a self-supporting community, the success of the Dawn community was
nonetheless intimately bound to the philanthropy and institutional structure that
maintained the school. The British-American Institute administration performed the
organizational duties of the settlement, school attendees came from the Dawn
community, and the churches and businesses at Dawn contributed to school upkeep
(Silverman 55). Initial success soon gave way to disarray, however, and the school
suffered from financial mismanagement and considerable debt. By 1845 the
settlement faced troubling financial difficulties. When William P. Newman (future
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editor of The Provincial Freeman) became secretary to the trustees, he soon charged
the executive committee—including Henson—with financial mismanagement. In
1847 a convention of dissatisfied black leaders from nearby Drummondsville,
Ontario appointed a five-man committee to audit the school’s books and papers.
After review, Henson was found not guilty of any wrongdoing. The same year, Fuller
died and Wilson abandoned the project, leaving only illiterate Henson behind as the
lone figurehead of the collapsing project (Silverman 56).
Henson turned to his charisma and preaching experience to raise funds for Dawn
and the school, traveling throughout New York, New England, and Great Britain in
an effort to secure assistance. Supporters pledged $1,500 to Henson during his tour
of England in 1849. Yet rumors that Henson was only posing as an agent of the
school and was using the money for self-aggrandizement soon stymied the
preacher’s efforts. In response, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society
appointed their secretary, John Scoble, to investigate Henson and inspect the school
for himself. In a remarkable move of racial paternalism, the Society assumed control
over the British-American Institute and appointed Scoble as overseer of the school’s
affairs. Despite misgivings about Henson, black residents at Dawn found Scoble
“distasteful to the people” and a man full of “pomp and pride,” not surprising in light
of the fact that Scoble took the best house, equipment, and livestock for himself and
began selling Dawn’s timber for personal gain soon after he arrived (reprinted in
Silverman 56-57). Despite these early protests, Scoble remained manager of the
school until 1868, well after Dawn was financially capable of providing safe haven to
runaway slaves (Silverman 57).
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Works Cited & Further Reading
Hartgrove, W. B. “The Story of Josiah Henson.” The Journal of Negro History 3, no. 1
(1918): 1-21.
Henson, Josiah. The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of
Canada, as Narrated by Himself. Boston: Arthur D. Phelps, 1849.
Ripley, C. Peter, ed. The Black Abolitionist Papers. Vol. II. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1985.
Silverman, Jason H. Unwelcome Guests: Canada West's Response to American Fugitive
Slaves, 1800-1865. Millwood: Associated Faculty Press, 1985.
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