Salem Chapel Underground RR Cemetery Project

We need your help.

 

Black history in Niagara is full of rich, remarkable stories. The Salem Chapel Underground Railroad Cemetery Project will restore gravestones of African-American freedom seekers who came to St. Catharines before the US Civil War on the Underground Rail Road (UGRR) and other early Black residents. St. Catharines played a major part in the UGRR, and was even named by famous abolitionist and UGRR “station master” Frederick Douglass in his memoirs as a terminus for freedom seekers who went to Canada. Harriet Tubman also lived for a time in St. Catharines, and her Fugitive Aid Society of St. Catharines membership included freedom seekers who permanently settled in the city and are buried at Victoria Lawn Cemetery.

 

Beginning in the spring of 2021, with Victoria Lawn Cemetery’s permission, we began to locate and identify gravestones for freedom seekers, all in need of restoration work. Two of our finds included John Lindsay (1805-1876), a prominent Black business owner, landowner, and brewer, and Mary Hutchinson, a freedom seeker and member of Harriet Tubman’s Fugitive Aid Society. Our initial explorations also uncovered a few surprises, and we expect with time and more research, we will find even more gravestones.

 

After consulting with cemetery restoration professionals, we are now looking to raise $15,000 dollars to hire experts to restore the existing gravestones and provide grave markers for those whose grave sites are currently unmarked. Victoria Lawn Cemetery, as one of the Niagara Peninsula’s largest and oldest municipal cemeteries, is a place frequented by individuals, families, students, and tourists. Once the gravestones are restored, and memorials are placed for those unmarked, they will contribute to enhancing tours focused on the history of the UGRR and Niagara's important role in it. The general public will also then be able to take self-guided tours of the cemetery to see the stones and learn more about Black history in St. Catharines and Ontario. These restorations will help to ensure that the memories and stories of those who escaped enslavement, made a life in St. Catharines, and helped others make a new life for themselves, will not be forgotten, and, in some cases, that their stories will be told for the very first time.

As freedom seeker descendants ourselves, Rochelle Bush (Salem Chapel Trustee and Resident Historian) and I (Adam Montgomery, PhD historian), hope to use this project to further education about Black Canadian contributions to early Ontario and Canada, to honour our ancestors who escaped enslavement, and to educate everyone about courageous freedom seekers and their amazing stories.

 

Although they now lie buried, with your help their stories will live on.

ADDITIONAL DONATION OPTIONS

Mail a cheque/check or money order to:

Salem Chapel, BME Church NHS

92 Geneva Street

St. Catharines, ON L2R 4N2

On the memo line, please write “cemetery fund.” 

Thank you for your support.