North Buxton
| North Buxton | |
|---|---|
| Unincorporated community | |
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| Coordinates: 42°18′37″N 82°13′30″W / 42.3103°N 82.225°WCoordinates: 42°18′37″N 82°13′30″W / 42.3103°N 82.225°W | |
| Country | Canada |
| Province | Ontario |
| Municipality | Chatham-Kent |
| Established | 1849 |
North Buxton is a rural community located in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. It was established in 1849 as a community for and by former African-American slaves who escaped to Canada to gain freedom. Rev. William King, a Scots-Irish/American Presbyterian minister and abolitionist, had organized the Elgin Association to buy 9,000 acres of land for resettlement of the refugees, to give them a start in Canada. Within a few years, numerous families were living here, having cleared land, built houses, and developed crops. They established schools and churches, and were thriving before the American Civil War. Buxton now has a population of over 400 people.
There was great interest in the settlement among Americans. Buxton was visited by a reporter from the New York Herald Tribune in 1857, and by the head of the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission in the summer of 1863, established after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had freed many slaves in the American South during the Civil War. These reports praised the achievements of the people of Buxton and other African Americans in Canada.
The community is within the Chatham-Kent municipality and today has a population of approximately 200, almost exclusively Black Canadians. North Buxton's historic population peaked at more than 2000, almost exclusively descendants of freed and fugitive slaves who had escaped the United States via the Underground Railroad. Great Britain abolished slavery in its colonies in 1838 and it had never been widespread in Canada. The related community is South Buxton.
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Wikipedia