Refugee Home Society
© Black Abolitionist Digital Archive, University of Detroit Mercy
Controlled by white officers, the Refugee Home Society was an organization that helped
Canada-bound fugitives obtain land. Famous abolitionists Henry Bibb and George DeBaptiste
served as its key black figureheads; DeBaptiste raised money between 1852 and 1855 so the
Society could purchase 2,000 acres of land. Despite the vast acreage, the Society only
managed to settle 150 men, women and children. Many accused DeBaptiste, Bibb and others
of scheming to acquire land and money for themselves. Bibb’s death in 1854 helped end the
Refugee Home Society; part of its failure may have been rooted in the way the community was
organized.
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In 1851—as the impact of the Fugitive Slave Act began to materialize in the “free” states—
Michigan abolitionists held a convention during which it was affirmed that they should
work together to help fugitives bound for Canada obtain land. The Refugee Home Society
was born from this decision. Orator and fugitive abolitionist Henry Bibb was probably the
most famous member of the organization; he was assisted in Detroit and Windsor by his
wife Mary and the wealthy black abolitionist George DeBaptiste.
Although Bibb and DeBaptiste served as key black figureheads for the Refugee Home
Society, it was in fact controlled by white officers Horace Hallock, Elias P. Benham,
Abraham L. Power, and J. Nathan Stone, who saw the new organization as a way to promote
temperance and moral reform for fugitives bound for Canada. Even after the Refugee Home
Society joined with the black Windsor-based Fugitive Union Society, the organization
remained heavily influenced by white Michiganders intent on missionizing African
American expatriates. In a controversial move, Bibb and white clergyman Charles C. Foote
toured the northeast United States in an effort to secure funds for the purchase of land with
support from the American Missionary Society (Ripley 147, The Liberator).
Funds raised by Bibb and Foote between 1852 and 1855 enabled the Refugee Home Society
to purchase roughly 2,000 acres of land. Yet during this same time the Refugee Home
Society only settled 150 men, women, and children, leading Mary Ann Shadd Cary and
Samuel Ringgold Ward to chastise Bibb and other Refugee Home Society members in the
Provincial Freeman as beggars who were seeking to aggrandize themselves at the expense
of struggling fugitives (Ripley 147, Silverman 59-60). Cary and Ward were not simply
antagonists. Echoing the concerns expressed in the pages of the Provincial Freeman, leading
black Canadians met in 1852 and 1853 to discuss the society’s land scheme, which they felt
placed unfair burdens on fugitives who were not allowed to dispose of the land as they saw
fit (Silverman 60). Although Bibb pushed back against the attacks in his Voice of the
Fugitive, his untimely death in 1854 sealed any prospect of the Refugee Home Society
becoming a flourishing African American “colony” in Canada.
Part of the failure of the Refugee Home Society may have been rooted in the way the
community was organized. Unlike the Dawn Settlement, which was conceived as a selfsufficient community, Refugee Home Society leaders opted not to purchase contiguous
parcels of land but instead purchase available tracts that sat along the Puce and Little
Rivers near Windsor (Ripley 147). Yet what ultimately sealed the fate of the Refugee Home
Society was the treatment of the fugitives who had turned to the organization for help. In a
move that infuriated already suspicious readers of the Provincial Freeman, the Refugee
Home Society sued fugitives when the organization fell into arrears (Silverman 59).
The history of the Refugee Home Society highlights the numerous tensions that shaped the
politics surrounding the fugitive slave dilemma for abolitionists. It captures in microcosm
the prevailing issues like colonization, black autonomy, moral reform, and white
paternalism, all of which impacted the way Bibb, Shadd Cary, and others struggled to figure
out how to best help fleeing slaves out of (and up from) slavery.
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Works Cited & Further Reading
The Liberator, July 29, 1852.
The Provincial Freeman
Landon, Fred. "Henry Bibb, a Colonizer." The Journal of Negro History 5, no. 4
(1920): 437-47.
Landon, Fred, and Karolyn Smardz Frost, eds. Ontario's African-Canadian Heritage:
Collected Writings by Fred Landon, 1918-1967. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2009.
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. Series in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Millwood:
Associated Faculty Press, 1985.
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