Rennalls educates public on Black component of Canadian history

Oxford County educator and freelance writer Heather Rennalls, pictured at Otterville’s African Methodist Episcopal Cemetery, is pleased to share significant elements of Canadian history featuring Black persons, which she points out are not limited to a single month. (Jeff Tribe Photo)

Jeff Tribe, Post Correspondent

It was a chilly, yet cheerfully bright and sunny winter’s day at the African Methodist Episcopal Cemetery, at Otterville’s northern edge. In the distance, ringing bells signalled the top of the hour, much closer, a red-tailed hawk’s shrill cry announced its presence.

“It’s always such a peaceful place,” mused Oxford County educator and freelance writer Heather Rennalls. “Even though it’s a cemetery, it’s comforting and peaceful.”

It takes a little imagination to envision the site’s rich history, hidden in plain sight as the saying goes. Today, a cairn and a metallic sign over the gate stand as silent and lonely sentinels paying respectful homage to the burial place of over 140 Black pioneers - one of the few preserved in Ontario - and the thriving, vibrant community that existed in the surrounding area over 150 years ago.

In Rennalls’ mind’s eye she can see and hear children laughing and playing, hymns sung in the church that stood a short distance away, related functions and picnics hosted on the nearby lawn.

“People just living their lives like everyone else.”

Area Black settlement began around 1829, encouraged by local Quakers whose abolitionist views resulted from a broad-based belief in equality, both in terms of race and sex. The settlers’ composition illustrates the nuanced complexity of Canadian history featuring Black persons. Rather than the common misconception all were freedom seekers escaping enslavement - a more common origin story in Ingersoll, which was a terminus for The Underground Railroad - many Black Otterville-area residents were free property owners from Maryland. Their emigration was driven in part by repressive and potentially dangerous fugitive slave laws enacted in 1850 to appease slave-holding states for Ohio’s admission to the union as a free state, as well as ongoing racism in various forms.

“They came to get a better life and to get away from persecution,” said Rennalls. “They had money and the means to buy property.”

A South Norwich Historical Society plaque states settlement numbers exceeded 100 within a few years. Population growth led to a mostly-Black school north of Otterville along Middletown Line servicing the area, and in 1856, the purchase of a half-acre lot and construction of a white-frame church. Its congregation featured a community of farmers, skilled tradesmen and mill operators said Rennalls.

“They were contributing members of society.”

Services and camp meetings were held onsite through the turn of the century, although Black population in the area declined by the 1880s for a variety of reasons. Many residents went back ‘home’ to the United States and their extended families following the Union victory in the U.S. Civil War and related abolition of slavery. Others moved on to larger centres seeking employment, still others stayed on, their descendants living in the area to this day.

Their story was published in Otterville historian Joyce Pettigrew’s book ‘A Safe Haven’, compilation of research she initiated and led, subsequently supported by others in the community including Gail Lewis. Rennalls was intrigued upon her 1992 move to Woodstock to discover the surrounding county’s ‘very, very rich history,’ included significant Black contribution.

Growing understanding ignited her passion for sharing that history, offsetting a general chronic lack in formal Canadian education.

A member of the Ontario Black History Society and London Black Heritage Council, Rennalls created a mobile presentation featuring the Otterville settlement, Ingersoll’s prominent position at the end of The Underground Railroad, and abolitionist John Brown’s visit to this area, during which he reportedly stayed with the sympathetic Tillson family in Tillsonburg. Brown was seeking financial support and soldiers to support his raid on the federal armoury at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.

Initially successful, Brown’s goal of instigating and arming an enslaved persons’ rebellion failed, however his subsequent capture and hanging were seen as rallying points for the abolitionist cause.

Rennalls hosts ‘Heather’s Historicals’, a website summarizing her presentation as well as hosting links to related organizations, events, employment opportunities and contacts. She has been active in Black History Month events (February, due says Rennalls to the fact Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln have their birthdays in that month) throughout Oxford County, including flag-raising ceremonies and related receptions. Rennalls was also present for a lunch and learn session at the Norwich and District Historical Society Museum Wednesday, Feb. 12 featuring legendary dancer Joey Hollingsworth, who retains fond memories of childhood summers spent at grandfather Huskey Henderson’s Ingersoll residence.

Pleased to help in an education effort she is passionate about, Rennalls does however gently point out one misnomer.

“Black history is Canadian history,” she concluded, pointing to diverse contributions from people who have been in this country for a very long time. “It’s 365 days of the year, not just the 28 or 29 in February.”