Underground Railroad in Canada book
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My name is Jerry Prager, and I am a writer and stone worker, living in Wellington County, Ontario.
prager stone work
In the past four years I have published two books on the movement of emancipated slaves into Ontario and Wellington County from the late 1700s to the mid 1800s, with a particular focus on the city of Guelph, and on an area of the province known as the Queen's Bush Settlement, where up to 1500 African Americans squatted on lands reserved for the Anglican Church from the late 1820s into the 1880s.
It has been my goal to understand, and then explain who helped these former slaves into this part of the province.
My first book was Laying the Bed: The Native Origins of the Underground Railroad, which detailed the involvement of the Tuscarora and the Mississauga First Nations in bringing fugitive slaves up the Grand River, and using ancient trails to travel further north.
That story begins in Loyalist times, when an unusual community formed at the head of Lake Ontario, at what is now Burlington. A family by the name of Groat, with white black and first nations blood, turned out to be crucial for understanding how legends of indigenous involvement actually played out on the ground.
My second book was called Exodus & Arrival: Fugitive Roads to Guelph and Beyond. It went looking for anti-slavery activists, Quakers and other individuals who might have been involved in helping fugitive slaves into Canada, and then moving them north to Guelph and the Queen's Bush. Having found such individuals, I was able to fill in a great many blanks in the story of the emanicipation movement in Ontario and Wellington County.
http://abolition-emancipation.blogspot.ca/2015/03/backgrounder-freedom-trails-into-queens.html
I am now in the process of completing the third book Blood In the Mortar: Freedom in Stone, which focuses on a British Methodist Episcopal Church built in Guelph in 1880.
It was the potential sale of that church by the BME of Canada in 2010, and its subseuqent purchase by the newly formed Guelph Black Heritage Society, that originally led me to investigate how African Americans ended up in Wellington County, since no primary research beyond some family stories existed... plus one excellent book on who was actually in the Queen's Bush during the years mentioned above.
Blood in the Mortar was orginally intended as the first book, but the gaping holes in the narrative necessitated the research and writing of the first two books.
Having established the how, when, why and who of the story of this part of the province, the third book returns to the creation of the church, first as a congregation, and then as a log church replaced by the 1880 stone building.
All this has been done at my own expense, and has involved considerable amounts of unpaid time and effort, including the self-publishing of the first two books.
Those two works have been well recieved, particularly by academics, and local historians.
It is my hope that I might be able to raise a modest amount of money to finish the series, perhaps in time for Black History Month 2017, if not that soon, then shortly after. The third book is mostly written, but requires many dedicated hours to finish it, including what is certain to be two solid weeks of index creation.
The money will be spent on rent and food etc, as well as a small first printing, after which, a carfeul balancing of small printings and sales will keep the books in print.
I have tried to do this on my own, and have received no funding from anyone for any of the many hundreds of hours I have poured into researching, writing and promoting these works, although I should note that I have received some minor honoriums to speak to groups about the books.
Quite frankly. I am worn out by these labours, and have avoided the third book for over a year now. It needs to be finished, and, with or without funds, I will finish it.
I am dogged researcher, aided and abetted by an obssesive compulsive need to get to the bottom of things. At the risk of bottoming out, one way or another, I am going to kick this can to the finish line.
Any help that anyone who like to give me financially would be profoundly welcomed.
My African roots are hundreds of thousands of years old, so not very recent, however, I abhor slavery, and have sought to honour those who fought it, escaped it, and helped undo its harms. That is why I have searched for and written their stories.
For the most part, the books have been a gift, having taken me from knowing next to nothing, to becoming as well versed in these matters as I now am.
As anyone who has undertaken a study of slavery and its effects will understand, these works have also darkened my spirit, even while its sung and unsung heroes have uplifted it. We shall overcome. although there are still at least 26 millions slaves in the world today.
The more the story is understood, the more it can be updated.
My blog Blood in the Mortar provides more detials about work. It can be found at
abolition-emancipation.blogspot.com
prager stone work
In the past four years I have published two books on the movement of emancipated slaves into Ontario and Wellington County from the late 1700s to the mid 1800s, with a particular focus on the city of Guelph, and on an area of the province known as the Queen's Bush Settlement, where up to 1500 African Americans squatted on lands reserved for the Anglican Church from the late 1820s into the 1880s.
It has been my goal to understand, and then explain who helped these former slaves into this part of the province.
My first book was Laying the Bed: The Native Origins of the Underground Railroad, which detailed the involvement of the Tuscarora and the Mississauga First Nations in bringing fugitive slaves up the Grand River, and using ancient trails to travel further north.
That story begins in Loyalist times, when an unusual community formed at the head of Lake Ontario, at what is now Burlington. A family by the name of Groat, with white black and first nations blood, turned out to be crucial for understanding how legends of indigenous involvement actually played out on the ground.
My second book was called Exodus & Arrival: Fugitive Roads to Guelph and Beyond. It went looking for anti-slavery activists, Quakers and other individuals who might have been involved in helping fugitive slaves into Canada, and then moving them north to Guelph and the Queen's Bush. Having found such individuals, I was able to fill in a great many blanks in the story of the emanicipation movement in Ontario and Wellington County.
http://abolition-emancipation.blogspot.ca/2015/03/backgrounder-freedom-trails-into-queens.html
I am now in the process of completing the third book Blood In the Mortar: Freedom in Stone, which focuses on a British Methodist Episcopal Church built in Guelph in 1880.
It was the potential sale of that church by the BME of Canada in 2010, and its subseuqent purchase by the newly formed Guelph Black Heritage Society, that originally led me to investigate how African Americans ended up in Wellington County, since no primary research beyond some family stories existed... plus one excellent book on who was actually in the Queen's Bush during the years mentioned above.
Blood in the Mortar was orginally intended as the first book, but the gaping holes in the narrative necessitated the research and writing of the first two books.
Having established the how, when, why and who of the story of this part of the province, the third book returns to the creation of the church, first as a congregation, and then as a log church replaced by the 1880 stone building.
All this has been done at my own expense, and has involved considerable amounts of unpaid time and effort, including the self-publishing of the first two books.
Those two works have been well recieved, particularly by academics, and local historians.
It is my hope that I might be able to raise a modest amount of money to finish the series, perhaps in time for Black History Month 2017, if not that soon, then shortly after. The third book is mostly written, but requires many dedicated hours to finish it, including what is certain to be two solid weeks of index creation.
The money will be spent on rent and food etc, as well as a small first printing, after which, a carfeul balancing of small printings and sales will keep the books in print.
I have tried to do this on my own, and have received no funding from anyone for any of the many hundreds of hours I have poured into researching, writing and promoting these works, although I should note that I have received some minor honoriums to speak to groups about the books.
Quite frankly. I am worn out by these labours, and have avoided the third book for over a year now. It needs to be finished, and, with or without funds, I will finish it.
I am dogged researcher, aided and abetted by an obssesive compulsive need to get to the bottom of things. At the risk of bottoming out, one way or another, I am going to kick this can to the finish line.
Any help that anyone who like to give me financially would be profoundly welcomed.
My African roots are hundreds of thousands of years old, so not very recent, however, I abhor slavery, and have sought to honour those who fought it, escaped it, and helped undo its harms. That is why I have searched for and written their stories.
For the most part, the books have been a gift, having taken me from knowing next to nothing, to becoming as well versed in these matters as I now am.
As anyone who has undertaken a study of slavery and its effects will understand, these works have also darkened my spirit, even while its sung and unsung heroes have uplifted it. We shall overcome. although there are still at least 26 millions slaves in the world today.
The more the story is understood, the more it can be updated.
My blog Blood in the Mortar provides more detials about work. It can be found at
abolition-emancipation.blogspot.com
Organizer
Jerry Prager
Organizer
Woolwich, ON
