A Road Trip Away From the Beach

We did more than plant flowers and veggies on the Victoria Day weekend. While thousands of people flocked to our lakeside village, we took a little road trip away from it. It was to see something I’ve wanted to see since we lived in Wallaceburg.

Our Wallaceburg stay was a short one, just eight months, about six years ago. But you know how one weekend can have a bigger impact than the whole rest of a year? Wallaceburg was like that in the vast scope of our lifetime. It stood out. We drove past our former house and admired the new fencing and trees.

Wallaceburg is close to Dresden and a heritage centre called, at the time, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I always wanted to visit and we never did. So, with no big obligations on the long weekend, I pitched the idea of a road trip. Derek was in.

An Important Name Change

Two years ago, they changed the name to Josiah Henson Museum of African-Canadian History. Here’s a brief history of why the name was changed. I have super-simplified it from my understanding as a white woman who’s trying to learn.

In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Uncle Tom was a slave. The author used Josiah Henson’s autobiography, published three years earlier, as inspiration. Uncle Tom never left the southern US. Tom was passive, endured unimaginable treatment and was eventually beaten to death. In decades to come, Uncle Tom would come to mean a Black man who was submissive to whites. As one Black activist described Uncle Tom: a Black man with a white heart. It became an insult from whites and Blacks alike.

Stowe’s intentions were good. She aimed to highlight the horrors of slavery. She accomplished that goal, but for Josiah, personally, it was more complicated. To this day, many people mistakenly believe that Stowe’s novel is a historical account of Josiah Henson’s life. But the fates of the two men, fictional and real, differ greatly.

Henson escaped slavery and made his way to Canada. (Canada abolished slavery in 1834, thirty-one years before the US.) He went back to the US and freed 118 people. His home sits on the museum’s site, part of the original Dawn Settlement he founded. The house is about 1/3 mile away from where it stood when he and his family lived in it. They are all buried in a cemetery on the grounds. There’s also a church where Henson preached, a sawmill, and other structures and artifacts.

Underground Railroad Conductors

Not long ago, I read a biography of Maryland-born Harriet Tubman. She freed about 75 slaves and helped them settle in St. Catharines. I learned many things about slavery that aren’t as well known.

Even after the law was enacted to end American slavery, holdout states put bounties on the heads of free Blacks. Bounty hunters would travel to anti-slavery states and kidnap “free” people to return to those states for the rewards. People like Harriet Tubman and Josiah Henson risked capture and re-enslavement to return to the States and free others. True heroes.

After the birth of his fourth child, Josiah Henson was determined to get his family to freedom. The odds were stacked high against him. At the museum, we saw actual torture devices used on captured runaways. Their family members left behind were tortured, too.

It isn’t a huge museum but it packs a lot of information. Some of it is deeply unsettling. But Josiah Henson’s life became about hope and action, love and resilience. Once he established the Dawn Settlement at Dresden, he helped found the Manual Labor School. Freed slaves learned about trades and gained skills that enabled them to work and earn a living.

A Life Well Told

I don’t want to live my life not knowing about remarkable, brave people like Josiah Henson. We’re seeing some southern neighbours, and some in our own country, attempt to erase history. Black history, Indigenous history – histories where white people were villains and did unspeakable things. I want to drink it in, even when it tastes bitter and upsets my stomach. This is what we’ve come from. At the very least, knowing about it reminds us to always do better.

Josiah lived to the age of 92. He was famous in his day as an abolitionist, preacher, author, and leader. Queen Victoria in England met with him on one of his visits there. He was illiterate and dictated his memoir in 1849. Nine years later, he dictated an updated version of it, with a foreword by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Putting his name on the museum finally gives him the dignity and respect he earned.