Jerry Prager, author of Laying the Bed: The Native Origins of the Underground Railroad, will be releasing the second book in that series during February, which is Black History Month.
Exodus & Arrivals: Fugitive Roads to Guelph and Beyond explores the who, where, when and whys of how over 1,500 former fugitive slaves and American free blacks ended up living in the Queen’s Bush settlement, a day’s walk north of Guelph, from the late 1820s into the 1860s.
Prager’s research includes previously unknown Quakers in south Wellington, as well as links to American and Niagara region Quakers and abolitionists through the person of John Wetherald, father of Rockwood Academy founder William Wetherald. John Wetherald lived in Puslinch Township from 1833 until his death in 1852.
The book also explores the south Wellington Reform Association allies of George Brown, head of the provincial Reform Party, owner of the Globe Newspaper, and cofounder of the Canadian Anti-Slavery Society in 1851, following the passage of the second American, Fugitive Slave Act in 1850.
Thomas Sandilands, a Guelph banker, was the VP of that society for the town.
Since the first book established it was on native trails that the Quakers “laid the bed” of the Underground Railroad, the second book follows those trails into Wellington County and then north of the Grand River into the Queen’s Bush. It also examines Sandilands and other political reformers who were involved in turning old trails into roads, which made getting away from border areas much easier for fugitives heading for the settlement.
In the end, Exodus & Arrival answers the question of what role Guelph played in helping former slaves, and also answers the question of why so many blacks ended up living in Guelph before the end of the 19th century, after the Queen’s Bush Settlement dispersed.
