Family Secrets: Crossing the Colour Line

264 Pages·2003·14.29 MB·English

by  Catherine Slaney

FAMILY SECRETS
This page intentionally left blank
FAMILY SECRETS
Crossing the Colour Line
CATHERINE SLANEY
Foreword by Dr. Daniel G. Hill III
NATURAL HERITAGE BOOKS
TORONTO
Copyright © 2003 Catherine Slaney
All rights reserved. No portion of this book, with the exception of
brief extracts for the purpose of literary or scholarly review, may be
reproduced in any form without the permission of the publisher.
Published by Natural Heritage / Natural History Inc.
P. O. Box 95, Station O, Toronto, Ontario M4A 2M8
www.naturalheritagebooks.com
Cover visuals, clockwise from top left: Julia Margaret Hubbard,
Donald Anderson, Marion Abbott (Young), Dr. A.R. Abbott and Gus Abbott.
Cover visuals are courtesy of the Abbott family.
All visuals not credited in the text are courtesy of the author.
Cover and text design by Blanche Hamill, Norton Hamill Design
Edited by Jane Gibson
Printed and bound in Canada by Hignell Printing Limted
The text in this book was set in a typeface named Granjon.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Slaney, Catherine, 1951—
Family secrets : crossing the colour line / Catherine Slaney.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-896219-82-9
1. Abbott, Anderson Ruffin, 1832-1913. 2. Black Canadians—History.
3. Black Canadians—Biography. 4. Physicians—Canada—Biography.
5. Abbott family. 6. Slaney, Catherine, 1951-.
7. Racially mixed people—Canada—Biography. I. Title.
FC3097.9.B6Z6 2003 971'.00496'00922 C2002-904396-4
F1059.5.T689N458 2003
Canada
ONTARIO ARTS COUNCIL THE CANADA COUN LE CONSEIL DeS ARTS
:ONSEIL DES ARTS DE L'ONTARIO FOR THE ARTS DU CANADA
SINCE 1957 DEPUIS 1957
Natural Heritage / Natural History Inc. acknowledges the financial support of
the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing
program. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through
the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative. We also
acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and
the Association for the Export of Canadian Books.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Foreword by Dr. Daniel G. Hill III ix
Introduction xi
1. On a Quest 3
2. In the Beginning 13
3. The Canadian Alternative 18
4. Early Black Churches in Toronto 27
5. The Elgin Settlement 31
6. Back in Toronto 44
7. Off to War 51
8. Dr. Abbott and the Civil War 59
19. The Grand Army of the Republic 70
10. Early Medical Practice in the
Nineteenth Century 75
11. Settling Down 85
12. The Country Life 93
13. Education—Separate But Equal? 105
14. The Political Arena 111
15. The Dundas Years 119
16. The Chicago Years 122
17. Dr. Abbott's Philosophy: An
African-Canadian Perspective 127
18. The Separation Begins 133
19. Fade to Black 147
20. Crossing the Colour Line 154
21. The Passing Years 162
22. Locating Myself on the Colour Line 176
23. The Reunification 183
24. My Reconciliation 190
v
CONTENTS
Appendix I Family Trees 195
Appendix II Last Will and Testament of 198
Wilson Ruf n Abbott—Nov. 21, 1876
Appendix III Civil War Memoirs from 201
Dr. Anderson Abbott
Appendix IV On William Peyton Hubbard 207
Notes 210
Bibliography 232
Index 236
About the Author 249
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE who supported this project over the last
twelve years and I could never begin to thank them enough for their
belief in the merits of this book.
A very special thank you is due to Dr. Daniel G. Hill and his son
Lawrence Hill, who both took the time to walk me through the arduous
research and documentation process of this project. Countless other librar-
ians and archivists were most patient and helpful all over Canada and
the United States, but I especially want to thank Christine Mosser of the
Toronto Reference Library for her great assistance from the very begin-
ning. There were many other archivists and historians who lent a hand
or an ear over the years, such as Shannon and Bryan Prince from the
Raleigh Township Centennial Museum, Gwen Robinson of the Heritage
Room, WISH Centre in Chatham, and Dalyce Newby who authored a
biography of Anderson Ruf n Abbott and uncovered so many minute
details pertaining to his life.
James W. St. G. Walker, Professor of History at the University of
Waterloo, has boldly supported this project from beginning to end, with
his optimistic encouragement during the initial stages of my quest and
with his final reading of the manuscript upon its completion. Rosemary
Sadlier, President of the Ontario Black History Society and a talented
author and historian in her own right, also stood by throughout the
duration of my endeavour, and I thank you both for caring so much.
My entire family will treasure forever the special gift that Dinah Christie
and Tom Kneebone gave us with the musical play Doc Ruffin, as they so
artfully brought our forebears to life. It was a fantastic excuse for a long-
overdue family reunion and we were all thoroughly entranced by the lure
of the greasepaint. During that period we were immensely impressed with
the many individuals from the Civil War Re-enactment groups that so
graciously came forward to honour and commemorate the memory of
Anderson Ruf n Abbott at the Toronto Textile Museum's exhibition of
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Lincoln's shawl and Smile Theatre's gala performance of Doc Ruffin.
Special thanks to Ray Huff for the printing of the poster of Anderson
Abbott, to Paul Culliton for his valuable research on Canadians in the
American Civil War and Oliver Claffey, Brian Brady and the Boys of
Company 'C' for their musical accompaniments to these portentous events.
Of course, my love and eternal thanks must go to my husband, Ken,
my children, David, Christine, Scott, Ashley and Tyler. To my parents,
Marion and Howard Young and to all my relatives, especially to those
who drew so much from personal memories like my uncle, Bob Abbott
and my cousins, Gus Abbott and Wynn Stubenvoll. To all of my cousins,
I can only say, thank you for taking me into your hearts. It has been a
great privilege to find you and know you.
Finally, it goes without saying that Family Secrets would never have
come to fruition if my editor Jane Gibson and her husband, publisher
Barry Penhale, had not seen the promise of a remarkable story now within
the covers of this book. Thank you for believing in my quest.
viii
FOREWORD
IN i978, MY WIFE Donna and I co-founded the Ontario Black
History Society for a number of reasons. We wanted to highlight and
celebrate the history of Blacks in Canada. We knew that there was a
wealth of personal, professional and social histories involving Blacks in
this country. And we knew that much of this history ran the risk of being
lost to subsequent generations, because it was unwritten and unrecorded.
The African tradition of passing along family and community histo-
ries from generation to generation served Blacks in North America for
hundreds of years. We were stolen out of Africa, shackled and trans-
ported in the most barbaric conditions to the New World, where we
were enslaved and deprived of the faintest shreds of human rights for
the better part of three centuries. Nevertheless, we have survived—and
done so admirably. Despite the fact that throughout slavery we were
legally barred from learning to read and write, we have managed to
retain and celebrate our humanity and our history, including the sad
but ultimately uplifting tale of survival against all odds.
How have Black people managed to preserve their own history? The
oral tradition of storytelling, unique social institutions such as the Black
church and Black advocacy organizations and artists—musicians, painters,
writers, dancers and others—have all helped save our history to date. But
how, as we move into a new millennium, are we to remember our histo-
ries, so that we never have to relive them? How are we to grow increasingly
conscious of who we are, where we've come from, what struggles our
ancestors have made—in short, our history in all its subtleties?
The challenge in documenting and analyzing Black history in Canada
was revealed to me in the 1950s, as I began to research my University of
Toronto Ph.D. thesis on Negroes in Toronto. For the most part, Black
Canadian history did not exist, on paper, at that time. It is true that since
then, Canadians have witnessed the growth of a body of academic and
literary works devoted to the Black experience here. Nonetheless, there
ix