When Benjamin Drew visited Canada in 1854 he found that the Society had purchased nearly 2,000 acres of land, that forty of the 25-acre plots had been taken up and that there were 20 families located. A school was being maintained during three-fourths of the year, intoxicating liquors had been completely banned and a society known as the True Band had been organized to look after the best moral and educational interests of the colony.[11] The colony was fortunate in the first teacher that was engaged for the school. This was Mrs. Laura S. Haviland, who came in the fall of 1852 and began her work in the frame building which had been erected for general meeting purposes. So great was the interest in her Bible classes that even aged people would come many miles to attend. Similar success attended her experiment of an unsectarian church. In her autobiography she tells something of the conditions in the colony while she was there. In their clearings the settlers raised corn, potatoes and other vegetables while a few had put in two or three acres of wheat. Mrs. Haviland's account of the colony is much more favorable than some of the adverse stories that were sent abroad regarding it.[12]
Rev. W. M. Mitchell, who was a Negro missionary among his own people in Toronto, makes the following reference to the colony in his "Underground Railroad":
"About ten miles from Windsor there is a settlement of 5000 acres which extends over a large part of Essex county. It is called the Fugitives' Home. Several years ago a very enterprising and intelligent fugitive slave ... bought land from the government, divided it into 20-acre plots and sold it to other fugitives, giving them five to ten years for payments. Emigrants settled here in such large numbers that it is called the Fugitives' Home. The larger portion of the land is still uncultivated, a great deal is highly cultivated and many are doing well."
The writer goes on to point out the evidences of the material advancement of the colony. There were two schools, the government paying half the salary of the teacher and the other half being collected from the parents. The school he found was also used for the church services, though the spirituality of the people seemed low.[13]
The record of Henry Bibb's activities in Canada show that he took a broad view of the refugee question. He associated himself actively with the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada at its formation in 1851 and at the first annual meeting held in Toronto in 1852 was elected one of the vice-presidents. In the reports of this organization will be found several references to his work. He was also the first president of the Windsor branch of the Anti-Slavery Society and made several tours through the western end of Upper Canada visiting the Negro communities and speaking on the slavery issue. In his newspaper, The Voice of the Fugitive, he chronicled every movement that would aid in the uplift of his people and set forth their needs in an admirable way. Its columns give a large amount of information concerning the fugitives in Canada after 1850.
Bibb's colonization plan was a well-meant effort to improve the status of the Negro in Canada. While it lacked the permanence of the Elgin settlement, which even today preserves its character, it opened the way for a certain number of the refugees to provide for their own needs and it lessened to some extent the congestion of refugees in border towns like Windsor and Sandwich. It is a debatable question whether segregation of these people was wise or not. At that time it seemed almost the only solution of the very pressing problem. After the Civil war many of the Negroes in Canada returned to the United States and those who remained found conditions easier. There was usually work for any man who was willing to labor and it is a well-recorded fact that many of the fugitives, entering the country under the most adverse of circumstances, succeeded in getting ahead and gathering together property. Benjamin Drew's picture of the Canadian Negroes as he found them in the middle of the fifties is favorable and when Dr. Samuel G. Howe investigated the Canadian situation on behalf of the Freedmen's Inquiry Commission in 1863[14] he was able to report:
"The refugees in Canada earn a living, and gather property; they marry and respect women; they build churches and send their children to schools; they improve in manners and morals—not because they are picked men but simply because they are free men. Each of them may say, as millions will soon say, 'When I was a slave, I spake as a slave, I understood as a slave, I thought as a slave; but when I became a free man I put away slavish things.'"
Fred Landon