The walls were five feet (one-and-a-half metres) high and six feet (nearly two metres) wide, and, if placed end to end, would be about one mile (one-and-a-half kilometres) long. These walls served two purposes — to enclose the fields and to serve as a roadway wide enough for a small ox cart. Portions of these walls built on Major John McKinnon’s property and others built on Ranald McKinnon’s property are still visible today. Today, with permission of the owners, it is possible to visit these walls. From the main road, it is quite a distance to the old homestead, but they are there. They are not marked by a sign, and some local residents persist in denying that they were built by slaves. One of today’s owners of the property, Robert Swain, an American architect, was interviewed by Edward Warner of the Boston Globe on March 4, 1990. In the article, Swain says that John McKinnon imported two hundred free slaves to work the land and build a mile-long (one-and-a-half-kilometre) stone wall from his barn to the sea.
According to Jackson Ricker: “Slaves. In my rambles through the old sites and cellars of Argyle I passed an interesting place unnoticed. It is the spot which was Colonel MacKinnon’s [McKinnon’s] ‘Slave farm.’ Colonel MacKinnon owned slaves who laboured on his farm on MacKinnon’s Hill, and on the flat land south of the hill he set off land which the slaves tilled for their own living.”7 The slave farm was in the southwestern corner of the field at the foot of McKinnon’s Hill. For many years the hearths where they cooked their meals could still be seen, but years of abandonment have made the exact location hard to find. It is believed that some traces of these hearths are still there, even if only some fragments of broken dishes, but the difficulty is knowing where to look. It has also been reported that there is a cemetery of coloured people on this land, but no one knows its exact location. It is most likely that some of his slaves who died before they were set free are buried there in unmarked graves. After McKinnon’s slaves were freed, some of them took the McKinnon surname as they had no last name of their own. Their descendants are still living in Yarmouth.
The next set of records to be located pertaining to a family that came to the area with slaves was that of Jesse Gray. A Loyalist fleeing the American Civil War, Gray came to Nova Scotia from Charlestown.8 He was given a large grant of land at Argyle in return for his military service in the South. It seems that Jesse Gray was a cruel, heartless, and vicious man who didn’t think twice about using brutality to keep the Negroes who worked for him in line. It had only to be the smallest complaint for him to drag out the cowskin and use it to tear the flesh off a slave.
In June 1786, Gray was brought before the courts in Shelburne, accused of whipping a Negro servant named Pero Davis. Gray was fined twenty pounds and ordered to keep the peace. But Gray’s problems concerning Davis did not end there. Davis, being a strong man, filed a complaint against Jesse again. Davis’s affidavit stated that he was “in the Imploy of one Jesse Gray, he was by the said Jesse Gray most severly beat with a cowskin to the number of one hundred lashes round his body in the gratest violence.”9 Gray was brought before the courts and charged with assault and battery against Pero Davis. No “True Bill” was found, suggesting that there was not enough physical evidence to convict him, although the jurors declared that Gray was guilty of assault. The jury’s findings in Shelburne Court Records state “Jesse Gray … with force and with arms … did make an assault against him the said Pero Davis then and there [Jesse] did beat wound and ill-treat so that his life was greatly dispaired of …”10
Jesse Gray’s cruelties seem to have escalated against several other Black people, this time against a woman and her two children. The date of this next episode goes back to St. Augustine, Florida, in 1785, although the court case only began in Shelburne County Court in 1791. On March 1, 1785, Gray abducted a freed African woman by the name of Mary Postell, and her two young daughters, Flora and Nelly. They boarded a ship at St. Mary’s River and sailed from St. Augustine to Shelburne.11 The story of Jesse Gray and Mary Postell is rather bizarre and has more than one version.
One telling indicates Mary was born in South Carolina and was the property of Elijah Postell. After Elijah died, she became the property of his son, William, according to his wife Mary’s statement, provided in her testimony before the General Sessions of Shelburne on July 8, 1791. William was a captain in the American army then rebelling against Great Britain.12 Once Charlestown was captured by the British army, Mary escaped by joining the King’s forces and taking refuge within the British lines near Charlestown. When Charlestown was evacuated, she went to St. Augustine, where she worked as a servant for Jesse Gray. Here the story changes, as seemingly Jesse sold her to his brother Samuel, then bought her back and ultimately took her to Nova Scotia when he emigrated.
Upon their arrival in Shelburne, Jesse promised to use her well while she lived with him. According to Mary Postell’s deposition, Jesse did:
despose of her to a certain William Mangham and also sold and desposed of her oldest girl (aged about ten years) to one John Henderson who carried her to South Carolina as she is informed, and thence to sell her youngest child — and this deponent lastly sayeth that said Jesse Gray has no right whatever to her or her children and that she is afraid that said Jesse Gray or William Mangham will seize her & her child and carry them away.13
Mary found two witnesses in the area, Scipio and Dina Wearing, who were willing to speak for her. Scipio was at one time the property of a man whose surname was Wearing and who had married the widow of Elijah Postell (with whom Mary had once lived). It is assumed that Dina was Scipio’s wife. They were willing to testify that she had been a slave of a rebel and had helped to build fortifications for which work she was given her “Certificate of Freedom.” While Scipio and Dina testified, his “house took fire, and together with the whole of his Furniture, Wearing Apparel, and other property, was consumed. That by the said fire, he had also suffered the loss of a Child.”14
But, despite all of her testimony, Mary was unable to prove that she had a Certificate of Freedom and that it had been stolen from her. Although Mary had said that she had been Jesse Gray’s mistress, she could not prove that she had not been his slave. Jesse was acquitted because many of the magistrates were Loyalists and slaveholders themselves, and, therefore, generally unsympathetic to the plight of freed slaves.
Jesse sold Mary as a slave to William Mangham “for the price and consideration of one hundred bushels of potatoes.” He sold Mary’s daughter, Flora, to John Henderson for five pounds and personally delivered Flora to the dock where she was placed on the schooner, John and Sally, that was bound for the port of Wilmington, North Carolina.15
At the July 1791 session of the court, the jury found Jesse Gray guilty of a misdemeanour for selling Mary Postell as a slave and kidnapping Flora Postell, her daughter. Jesse was described by the jurors who were charged with reaching a verdict, as “being a Wicked and Evily disposed person greedy of lucre and seeking his Own profit and advantage by the loss and damage of others.”16 Despite feeling as they did about Jesse Gray, the jury still found him guilty of only a misdemeanour.
Indictments were brought down against several Negroes who were slaves of mean-spirited owners. Such was the case of a young girl, thirteen years of age, named Harriett. A case of larceny was brought against her by Samuel Marshall, Esquire of Yarmouth, who was at that time one of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace in the area. At the October 1810 term, the Grand Jury of Shelburne County came into court and presented a Bill of Indictment against one Harriett, a mulatto girl, for stealing a piece of ribbon, valued at nine pence, from Samuel Marshall, Esquire. Harriett pleaded not guilty and chose to be tried by a jury.
After hearing the evidence the jury decided. “It is the opinion of the Jury that Harriett is Guilty of charge alledged against her Rufus Hebbard foreman — Whereupon the court ordered the said prisoner Harriett to receive on the bare back twelve lashes, and the sheriff ordered to perform the same as soon as possible.”17 One can only imagine the pain and fear that Harriett felt as the lashes ripped into young flesh.
Punishments did not always fit the crimes.18 On January 30, 1809, a special session of the court in Yarmouth was held at which time several free Black men (there may have been one slave among them) were charged by the same Samuel Marshall on suspicion of stealing and embezzling rum, sheep, and sundry articles.