The Lost Queen’s Bush Settlement: Stories of an Early Ontario Black Community
In the early to mid 1800s, Canada was known as “The Promised Land” to enslaved people in the southern United States. Thousands of Freedom-Seekers made their way north, helped by a secret network of anti-slavery supporters known as the Underground Railroad.
African Methodist Episcopal Cemetery, Wellington County
Credit: Linda Brown-Kubisch
The Colored Church, near Glen Allan, Wellington County
Credit: Wellington County Museum and Archives
Over 1,500 formerly enslaved people settled in the wilderness in what is now Wellington and Waterloo Counties, Ontario. With few resources, they worked together to create a vibrant and thriving community with farms, mills, churches, and schools.
Discover the fascinating and heart-breaking history of this unique community and the factors that caused it to all but disappear by the late 1860s.
Throughout her life, retired Museum Curator Annemarie Hagan has striven to share untold stories, including those of the Black communities in Ontario.
It was only after she moved to Wellington County in 2019 that she discovered that she was living a few minutes away from where a vibrant Black settlement had once been. Now a member of the local Board of the Mapleton Historical Society, she is committed to sharing this important story of the community’s history.
“Historian to speak about Queen’s Bush Black pioneer settlement”
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