A Black American Missionary in Canada: The Life and Letters of Lewis Champion Chambers

by Hilary Bates Neary (Editor)

Overview

Lewis Champion Chambers is one of the forgotten figures of Canadian Black history and the history of religion in Canada. Born enslaved in Maryland, Chambers purchased his freedom as a young man before moving to Canada West in 1854; there he farmed and in time served as a pastor and missionary until 1868. Between 1858 and 1867 he wrote nearly one hundred letters to the secretary of the American Missionary Association in New York, describing the progress of his work and the challenges faced by his community. Now preserved in the collections of the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, Chambers’s letters provide a rare perspective on the everyday lives of Black settlers during a formative period in Canadian history.

Hilary Neary presents Chambers’s letters, weaving into a compelling narrative his vivid accounts of ministering in forest camps and small urban churches, establishing Sabbath schools and temperance societies, combating prejudice, and offering spiritual encouragement. Chambers’s life as an American in Canada intersected with significant events in nineteenth-century Black history: manumission, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction. Throughout, Chambers’s fervent Christian faith highlights and reflects the pivotal role of the Black church – African Methodist Episcopal (United States) and British Methodist Episcopal (Canada) – in the lives of the once enslaved.

As North Americans explore afresh their history of race and racism, A Black American Missionary in Canada elevates an important voice from the nineteenth-century Black community to deepen knowledge of Canadian history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780228015543
Publisher:	McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	11/15/2022
Series:	McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion , #97
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Hilary Bates Neary is a historical researcher and writer, editor, heritage advocate, and former university and college librarian. She lives in London, Ontario.

Table of Contents

Figures xiii

Acknowledgments xv

Abbreviations xix

Maps follow page xix

Introduction 3

1 Maryland, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Dresden (Canada West) 13

2 Letters from Dresden 44

3 London, Canada West 95

4 Letters from London 119

5 St Catharines and Hamilton, Canada West 177

6 Letters from St Catharines and Hamilton 197

7 New Jersey and Philadelphia and Hinterland 210

Conclusion 244

Bibliography 251

Index 259

Editorial Reviews

Hilary Neary makes a major contribution to scholarship by placing the reader in conversation with Chambers’s letters, thereby making available an untold story as a voice once silenced comes to life.” Noel Leo Erskine, Emory University


“Neary’s book offers an honest glimpse into our city’s past and the real history of Blacks in Canada — not the “anodyne one” we prefer to tell. As such, it’s a cornerstone for the interpretive work on which Fanshawe Pioneer Village can build.” London Free Press

From the Publisher