Book Description

The Black pioneers (1839-1865) who cleared the land and established the Queen's Bush settlement in that section of unsurveyed land where present-day Waterloo and Wellington counties meet, near Hawkesville, are the focus of this extensively researched book. Linda Brown-Kubisch's attention to detail and commitment to these long-neglected settlers re-establishes their place in Ontario history. Set in the context of the early migration of Blacks into Upper Canada, this work is a must for historians and for genealogists involved in tracing family connections with these pioneer inhabitants of the Queen's Bush. "In the 19th century one of the most important areas of settlement for fugitive American slaves was the Queen's Bush, then an isolated region in the backwoods of Ontario. Despite much recent attention to African-Canadian history, the Queen's Bush remains a remote territory for historical scholarship. Linda Brown-Kubisch offers a pioneering entry into that gap. With a jeweller's eye for the biological subject, Brown-Kubisch introduces the courageous Black adventurers and the hardships they faced in Canada." - James Walker, Professor of History, University of Waterloo, and author of The Black Loyalists (1976, 1992) and "Race," Rights and the Law (1997).