Wilberforce Colony - Founding

Founding

The increase in the Cincinnati Black population in the decade starting in 1820 was rapid and pronounced. In 1820, some 433 African-Americans comprised less than 4% of the city's population, but over the next decade the city's Black population swelled by more than 400%. This change alarmed some residents. In response to a citizens' petition in 1828, the Cincinnati City Council appointed a committee "to take measures to prevent the increase of negro population within the city". In March of that year the Ohio Supreme Court decided that the 1807 Black Laws were indeed constitutional. The Cincinnati City Council enforced this restrictive legislation. Near the end of June, Cincinnati Blacks elected Israel Lewis and Thomas Crissup to survey a site in Canada to which the Cincinnati Blacks could emigrate. Lewis and Crissup met with John Colbourne, the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, to discuss prospects of settling in the area. They entered into a contract with the Canada Company for the purchase of land in Biddulph in the Huron Tract in Ontario, lots 2, 3, and 5 north of the Proof Line Road and lot 11 south of the road, for the amount of $1.50 per acre. The land was on the Ausable River, some twenty miles (32 km) from Lake Huron, and about thirty-five miles from the shore of Lake Erie.

The Cincinnati Riots of 1829 continued from the start of July to the end of August. Those who left the city that summer comprised two groups: those who were primarily forced out of Cincinnati by violence, fear, and inability to work generally settled in nearby towns or villages. The second group was an organized exodus of blacks, with many emigrating to the Canadian site. Since movement to the still-unnamed Wilberforce Colony required purchase of land, those without financial resources simply stopped and settled in towns on the southern shore of Lake Erie where they could find work. They never made it to Canada.

Although exact figures are not known, evidence suggests that of the initial exodus, only five or six families made it to the Ontario colony in the first year. Eventually about 150-200 families settled there.

The initial group faced traveling some thirty-five miles northward through untracked forest, and then having to clear land for crops and build dwellings. Financial stability for the colony was precarious for that first year. Subsequent recruiting efforts drew Blacks from other northern cities, and by 1832 there were 32 families in the area. In 1831 the settlement was named Wilberforce in honor of William Wilberforce, the prominent British abolitionist who had led the fight for the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 that abolished slavery in most of the British Empire.