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The Blacks of St. Andrews
By David Sullivan
Delivered Before the Charlotte County Historical Society
March 18, 2007
St. Andrews had a black population for 165 years, from its founding in 1783 to the death of its last visibly black person, Caddy Norris, in 1948. These people numbered as many as 60 in 1851, but aside from a plaque in All Saints Church to Mr. Norris, Norris gravestones in the Rural Cemetery, a stone to the Stewart family, and a few articles on Edward Bannister, who became a popular New England painter, there is very little evidence that blacks were ever here, and I would venture to say that many citizens of St. Andrews don’t know there were ever blacks here.
When I moved to St. Andrews in 1995 and began casting about for topics to write on, somebody mentioned Mr. Norris and Mr. Bannister. Eventually I did write some articles for the New Brunswick Reader on these men, but I wondered what sort of community they came from. It was obvious they weren’t isolated individuals. In the course of doing the paper on Norris, for instance, I ran across the transcript of an interview with George Goodeill, former jailer, who mentioned the double hanging, long ago, of a black brother and sister, from the top beam of the jail. This stuck in my mind became I imagined it taking place upstairs in the Charlotte County Archives. When I was researching my book on the Algonquin I ran across a reference to this same event in the St. Andrews Standard for 1879, which gave names--Black Dick and Maria—and added that this horrible event took place 50 years ago at the St. Andrews courthouse. By that time I knew that the jail and courthouse in the 1820’s was located on the spot of the current Town Hall.
There were other little tidbits about St. Andrews blacks, such as the census data for 1851, which showed that this was the only black population in Charlotte County, unless you count the 5 or so in SG, or the 1 or 2 in SS. Local resident Rose Haughn had also told me of a black shantytown called Slabtown that she said she had heard existed along Cedar Lane, and Mr. Goodeill, himself an older resident of the town, had told me that he had heard in his younger days from a senior member of the town that there had been a black cemetery off Cedar Lane as well. Finally, last winter, I decided to try to piece together some sort of a picture of black St. Andrews. What I came up with was not exactly a story. It should be remembered that these people were largely illiterate, landless and poor, and as such didn’t leave many records behind. So it’s a very fragmentary picture, to be sure, but I think it fills in a few gaps in the history of a town which blacks helped shape.
I thought you might find it interesting to follow me as I pieced together one part of this story, just to give you a sense of how faint the traces of these people are, and how much guesswork is involved in coming up with anything like a narrative. I’ll focus on the execution of Richard and Maria Stewart, since it dates back quite far and has the advantage of there being some documentary material on the subject. One day at the Provincial Archives I checked the Royal Gazette for 1829, fifty years prior to the St. Andrews Standard reference, and eventually discovered a summary of the trial for the year 1826. The synopsis was written on August 29, after sentencing and just before execution was to be carried out. The circuit Judge was Ward Chipman, Junior, and the after giving Chipman’s verdict, the Gazette adds a paraphrase of the report in the local newspaper, the St. Andrews Herald. “The Herald says that Maria Stuart appears to be exceedingly agitated, but Richard Stuart exhibited no appearance of emotion whatever. There has been only one execution in this County since its erection. We deeply lament that there should be any cause for present sacrifice of human life, but the case was so clear, that nothing was left for either Court or Jury to induce them to lay any statement in favor of the miserable culprits before the Executive. We hope most sincerely, that this awful example will act as a warning to others in this vicinity, who, there is too much reason to believe, although not guilty, as in the present case of incest, yet are strongly suspected of having taken away the lives of their own children, the fruits of their illicit amours.”
Unfortunately the relevant issue of the St. Andrews Herald is missing for this month, but I did find a paraphrase of the case in the Eastport Sentinel. The article dwelt on the grisly nature of the murder, the infant being strangled by the father with a cord immediately after birth, and the event being secretly witnessed by the daughter of Maria Stewart, who thought it was odd to be sent to bed so early and got up to witness the crime from behind a curtain. Judge Chipman said that this made the case especially heart-rending, as the daughter was forced to supply the evidence that would hang her mother and uncle. Back I went to the Provincial Archives, and discovered in the minutes of the case, that a certain Margaret Stewart had testified on behalf of the prosecution. This must have been the daughter. In the All Saints Vestry book for this year I also discovered the notes of an emergency meeting held the morning of the execution, in order to decide what to do with the bodies. It didn’t seem respectful to bury them with the regular parishioners, but they were Anglican, so it was decided to mark off a small plot in the south-east corner of the cemetery (this would be off Carleton Street next to Vincent Massey School) for Richard and Maria and any after them who should suffer the full rigour of the law. I also discovered in the Anglican burial records the death in 1832 of Margaret Stewart, a girl of color, aged 18. If that is the same girl who witnessed the murder, and testified against her mother, she would have been 12 years old at the time. A few decades ago, someone compiled a record of burials in the Loyalist cemetery, but there is no mention of either Richard, Maria or Margaret Stewart. Like so much about the black history of this town, they have been forgotten, probably in this case because their graves were unmarked, or not marked with stone.
Richard and Maria were not the only Stewarts in SA at that time. As it turns out, the Stewart family was actually quite large, and although the relations among them are not always clear, they extend right down through the Norris family to the death of Caddy Norris in 1948.
I’d like to jump ahead to the census of 1851. This census is interesting because it lists families by race, and also because it was done house to house in a certain order, so you can see that while a small number of blacks lived as servants and labourers in town with white families, most lived in a separate area along one road, and quite a few were bunched together in a large boarding house nearby. I’m guessing that the road in question was Cedar Lane and the boarding house was the St. Andrews Poor House. The Poor House was located more or less on the site of the old golf clubhouse at the corner of Reed Avenue and Mowat drive. On the evidence of this census, however, the shantytown on Cedar Lane and certainly the inhabitants of the Poor House were not exclusively black. It was a mixture of black and poor Irish, by and large. The main families along Cedar Lane were the Stewarts. In 1851 there were black families headed up by John Stewart, Moses Stewart and Charles Stewart. They were farmers and labourers, and may have been brothers. They may also have been related to Richard and Maria. They would have been roughly in their mid-twenties in 1826, when the double hanging happened. Richard and Maria probably lived in Slabtown as well. The Sentinel account notes that they lived outside the town proper.
Here I would like to make a little digression. In the household of John Stewart is an old lady by the name of Violet Alexander, African, aged 96. I believe that this Violet is the Black Violet mentioned by Grace Helen Mowat in her Diverting History of a Loyalist Town. Ms. Mowat writes that Black Violet was a storehouse of information about the Revolutionary War, and could remember the day she was taken away from her little African village. In the daybook of Reverend Samuel Andrews, now at the Provincial Archives, I discovered the marriage of a Violet Tucker to Rueben Alexander, a black man, in 1792. The Records Office revealed the Rueben and Violet bought a small plot of land on the site of the present day community college in 1799 for one pound, which they sold ten years later to a wealthy white land owner by the name of Joseph Walton for the same amount. The All Saints baptismal records reveal that Rueben and Violet had quite a few children. One of them, to commemorate a famous British naval victory of 1799, was named Horatio Nelson Alexander. When did Violet come to St. Andrews? According to Ms. Mowat, she worked for Colonel Christopher Hatch. The Royal Gazette notes the departure of Colonel Hatch from his Germain Street home in SJ for St. Andrews in 1788. He probably brought Violet with him. She would have been 33 at the time.
Now what was Violet Alexander doing in the house of John Stewart? Well, just next door to John Stewart lives Joseph Alexander, black mariner, with his wife and five children. Joseph Alexander married Sarah Stewart, also black, in 1839. Somehow, John Stewart, and for that matter Moses and Charles, are probably related to Sarah Stewart, though just how I haven’t been able to tell.
Since we are on the Alexander line, something should be said about one of St. Andrews more famous black sons, Edward Bannister. Articles have been written about him, and although they tend to be quite anecdotal, they agree more or less that he shipped out of SA as a young man in the 1840s and became a barber in Boston before making his way to Providence, Rhode Island, where he established himself as an excellent romantic painter of his day. The SA Beacon commemorates his death in an article in 1901. His father of the same name married Hannah Alexander in 1826. Hannah may have been the daughter of Violet and Rueben Alexander, but in Reverend Andrews’ daybook there is also numerous mention of the births and baptisms of a certain Black Jeffrey, one of whose children is Hannah. It is possible that Reuben and Jeffrey were brothers, though like so much of the black history of SA that is just speculation.
In touching briefly on the Stewarts and Alexanders I’ve skipped over a great deal. The early references of the deaths, marriages and baptisms of black persons in SA show that they were quite numerous in the town. The earliest reference in Reverend Andrews’ daybook is to the double baptism of a certain Joseph and Charles, black men, in 1802. Black persons by the name of Stewart die aged 50 to 70 in the early 1800’s, so it seems as though the Stewarts, at least, were here pretty much from the beginning. There was a line of black barbers, probably brothers, by the name of Ross. There were two families who, a bit oddly for blacks at that time, actually owned land outside of town. Abraham Lodge and his large family were mill workers who owned land in Chamcook, probably on the river draining Chamcook Lake. It its day it was lined with sawmills. The census for 1861 onwards, however, indicates that Abraham Lodge’s wife eventually became a washerwoman and wound up in the Poorhouse. This probably happened after her husband’s death, not an uncommon fate for poor widows; and for black ones, who lived so close to the poverty line as a matter of course, almost inevitable.
What was it like for a black person to live in St. Andrews in the nineteenth century? It’s obvious enough that it was a hard scrabble existence. Here I might touch on a few items from the SA newspapers that point up that fact in one way or another. The first concerns the odd story of the visiting black barber named Crawford from Eastport, who after a long morning of shaving and barbering at the Railroad Hotel, located on the site of the present Kennedy House, requested lunch. He didn’t presume to sit at the common table, but merely requested that he be given something to eat. He got a sullen stare from some dirty servants, he reported to the Sentinel, and after waiting a long time with nothing to show for it, left town. This story was replied to with some heat in the SA Standard, which claimed on an eyewitness account that Crawford’s food was indeed on the way and would have reached the man if he just waited a little. “Your brother editor of the Sentinel, in his notice,” wrote the Standard, “has cast a reflection upon the whole inhabitants, based upon Crawford's false report; perhaps he may yet find out--that the Bluenoses are truly free, and that they hail every honest man be he ever so dark-skinned, as a brother. We have neither slaves nor slaveholders amongst us, nor are we living in slavish fear.” That was in 1848.
The death of George Stewart also throws a light on black life in nineteenth-century St. Andrews. George was the son of Moses Stewart, and was living with him in on Moses’ tiny strip of farmland along Cedar Lane when the 1851 census was taken. They seemed to be tenant farmers. Until 1877, Moses didn’t own his land, but rented, as did many others along this road. He had a bull, a pig and few chickens, and some sort of garden. The SA Poor House records in the Provincial Archives show that he loaned out his bull to the Poor House to service its cows, for example, and that George carted turnips from the Poor Farm to the local markets. George was an epileptic. In 1877 he fell into the fireplace while repairing a harness. The SA Standard reported on the incident in an article entitled “A Man Roasted Alive.” Aside from the mere fact of George’s death, which was horrible enough (he was removed to the nearby Poor House, where he died the next day), the article is notable for its description of George’s home, which is described as “a mere hovel, presenting a scene of squalid misery.” That the Poor House was preferable to George’s own home speaks volumes of the living conditions of George and probably all the blacks along Slabtown road.
And then there was the case of Samuel Stewart (nicknamed Sam Cole), one of the children of George and Eliza, who wound up in St. Andrews in the 1940’s, an old man down on his luck. Former mayor Fred Worrell in his regular item in the Courier reported on his sad case.
The family of Moses Stewart descends right down to the very end of the black population of St. Andrews. Aside from George, Moses had three daughters, Helen, Almira and Jessie. Jessie married Edward Brickson and had a daughter Maria. Maria married Charles Norris, a former black slave from Maryland, in 1872 and produced six children, of which the youngest was Cadman Norris, the last black citizen of St. Andrews.
By the time Charles Norris arrived in SA the black population was markedly on the decline. By the turn of the century just about the only blacks still alive, aside from the Norris’s, were Jessie Stewart, who had inherited the family property from Moses, and was being pressured by the St. Andrews Land Company to sell out for a golf course expansion, and an elderly lady named Mary Bignall, who after the death of her husband wound up in the Poor House. The censes no longer list individuals by race, but the children of the Stewarts do not seem to be here any more. Where did they go? The case of Margaret Stewart may be typical. This Margaret Stewart was the daughter of George and Eliza Stewart. In 1876, just a year before her father’s horrible accident, she moved with the family she worked for to Lewiston, Maine. We know this because her granddaughter, Elaine Bragdon, visited SA a few years back and left a photograph of her grandmother, aged 101 in 1956, with the Charlotte County Archives. She said that her family was very poor, and that many left for Maine when they came of age, adding intriguingly that some came back to be buried. There was a lot more work in New England at that time for both blacks and whites, in the textile mills in the Boston area, for example, and in the woods. There was a general movement south from the Maritimes generally.
There was probably much more opportunity for blacks in New England than in SA. There was a larger population base, and with that came a stronger civil rights movement. Edward Bannister and his wife were active in the struggle for black rights. There was probably more educational opportunity in New England as well. Here I would point out a well known photograph of the Algonquin hotel staff for 1896. To the right sits Ned Norris, older brother of Caddy Norris, to the left a black lady whose identity is unknown. Center rear are two black chefs. One of the men is George Braxton, a published author. His book titled Braxton’s Practical Cookbook came out in 1886. It is unlikely that these men would have done as well as they did had they grown up in SA. They would probably have wound up labourers, like just about every black men whose profession is on record here. It is also likely that had Edward Bannister not left SA as a young man, his career as a painter would have died on the barn doors and fences of Colonel Hatch’s farm, where he is said to have first shown talent as a painter.
Or they might have would up barbers. David and John Ross, who appear in the earliest marriage records for All Saints Church, were black barbers and probably brothers. Rueben Stewart appears as a witness (x his mark) as David Ross’s marriage, and Mr. Ross’s daughter Betsy, brain-damaged it seems as the result of a house-fire, becomes a permanent resident of the Poor House. Almira Stewart, daughter of Moses Stewart, marries a black barber from New Jersey named Theodore Bounds. After a large fire destroys his barbershop on Water Street in 1859, they move to Houlton, where Almira dies in childbirth and is returned to St. Andrews for burial. Harry Mallory remembered meeting Ned Norris, brother of Caddie Norris, in Houlton. He was working as a barber at the time, and it may have been this family which showed up at Caddy’s funeral. It might be remembered that Edward Bannister worked as a barber in Boston before moving to Providence, Rhode Island, to pursue his career as a painter. Herman Melville thought blacks made natural barbers and valets. Black historians have somewhat different point of view. They see barbering as one of the few skilled professions open to blacks in the nineteenth century.
You’re probably wondering about intermarriage. I’ve only come across one clear case. That was our good friend Moses Stewart and his wife Elizabeth Smith. Since he is given as African and his children as mulatto, it seems that his wife was white or herself mulatto. There is also the marriage of his daughter Helen to William Henderson in 1855. Mr. Henderson is given as Irish; it’s possible he was white. That said, there was probably much more intermarriage than these one or two cases. It’s not difficult to believe that black blood still flows in St. Andrews, in however diluted a form.
As for slavery, it’s probably easy to overestimate the amount of it. If the original black citizens of SA came with the Loyalists, then perhaps some were slaves. William Spray, in his history of the blacks of New Brunswick, asserts that there was slavery in SA, as well as SJ and other towns. He also notes, however, that the institution of slavery had been on the decline for decades before its actual abolition in the British Empire in 1833. It might be remembered that Violet and Rueben Alexander owned their own land in 1799. This suggests that they were free. I myself haven’t come across any documents indicating the actual practice of slavery in SA, though that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist in some form. Probably in the beginning most SA blacks were indentured servants, a form of servitude which wasn’t technically slavery, or you might say was slavery with a time limit on it.
Finally, about the black cemetery. I don’t believe there was one. The land along Cedar Lane was Commons land, and was with the exception of Moses Stewart, who didn’t buy until 1877, owned by whites. Moses Stewart was approached by the town in the latter part of the century to sell his property for the site of a new cemetery but he refused. I believe the black cemetery was really the Poor House cemetery. The Anglican burial records note that a few of its black parishioners were buried in what it termed “the poor house ground.” But even here, only a few are mentioned as being black. The few others whose burials there are recorded seem to have been white. Most were buried in the present-day Loyalist cemetery, but since then, like so much of the town’s black history, they have been forgotten.