Chloe Cooley

Chloe Cooley was a young black woman held as a slave in Fort Erie and Queenston, Upper Canada in the late 1700s, as the area was being settled by Loyalists from the United States. Her owner forced her into a boat to sell her in 1793 across the Niagara River in the United States.

This incident was observed by several witnesses, who petitioned the Executive Council of Upper Canada. Although charges were dropped against Cooley's owner, the incident is believed to have led to passage of the Act Against Slavery, 1793, in Upper Canada. It prevented slaves from being imported into the province and provided for gradual abolition of slavery within a generation among those held there.

In 1793 Cooley was held by Loyalist Adam Vrooman, a white farmer and former sergeant with Butler's Rangers who fled to Canada from New York after the American Revolution. He had purchased her several months before from Benjamin Hardison, another Loyalist who lived nearby at what is now Fort Erie, Ontario.

The Crown had explicitly allowed Loyalists to bring slaves to Canada by the Imperial Act of 1790. They brought an estimated 2000 into Canada after the American Revolutionary War, with an estimated 500 to 700 to Upper Canada, markedly increasing the number in the colonies. The Crown encouraged settlement in Upper Canada and the Maritime Provinces after the war, making land grants to compensate for property lost by Loyalists in the new United States. It wanted to develop these areas with English speakers.

There were growing rumors that the government might extend freedom to slaves. Some Black Loyalists, African-American slaves who had been freed by the British after leaving their rebel masters and joining the battle, had also been settled in Upper Canada, but most were resettled in Nova Scotia. The existence of slavery in the new provinces seemed a contradiction to the other rights which were protected for most residents.

Vrooman and other slaveholders feared losing their property rights in slaves, who were legally treated as chattel, and began to sell them off. Fearing that he would be forced to free Cooley, Vrooman arranged a sale, against her will, to an American across the Niagara River on March 14, 1793. In order to make the sale, Vrooman beat Cooley, tied her up and forced her into a small boat, aided by two other men. He rowed her across the river while she screamed. Peter Martin, a Black Loyalist of Butler's Rangers, witnessed the incident. He brought William Grisely, a white man who had also witnessed the abduction, to make a report to the Executive Council of Upper Canada. Others saw the incident but took no action.

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