Promised Land Project partnering with students

Who are Henry and Annie Weaver? They, and many others, are deceased early Black residents of Chatham, Ontario who are buried in Maple Leaf Cemetery and are now the subject of an exciting and precedent-setting heritage preservation and student education project that will be happening in Chatham-Kent in May and June.

The Promised Land Monument Restoration is a ground-breaking partnership that will see local high school students working with historians and restoration professionals to preserve, stabilize, and, in several cases, uncover neglected headstones of early Black residents of Chatham.

The project is the most recent initiative of the Promised Land Project, a multi-disciplinary five year undertaking to study and document Black history in Chatham-Kent. Funded through the Social Science & Humanities Research Council’s CURA program (Community University Research Alliance), the project partners university academics, local historians, and community organizations to uncover the role and evolution of early Black settlements in the Chatham-Kent area.

“Chatham-Kent was an extremely important settlement point for free Blacks and refugees from slavery in the mid-1800s and became a mecca for education, business, religion, literature, and political activism that had a direct impact on the future of North America,” states Devin Andrews, Community Coordinator of PLP. Henry and Annie Weaver, for instance, were both slaves who escaped to Canada on foot and came to Chatham. They secured employment, Henry as a butcher and Annie as a seamstress, and later acquired a property on the corner of Duke and Park Streets in Chatham where Henry established a grocery store on the main floor while Annie rented rooms on the second floor. They became one of Chatham’s most affluent families, with Henry becoming a Grand Master in the Masonic Lodge and the first Black councillor in the City of Chatham in the 1890s.

Henry and Annie’s monument in Maple Leaf Cemetery is one of several that will be conserved as part of this project that is a partnership between the Promised Land Project, Heritage Chatham-Kent, Chatham-Kent Cemeteries, and the Lambton Kent District School Board.

During the last two weekends of May and the first weekend of June, students from John McGregor Secondary School in Chatham will work with historians and experts trained in monument preservation, including Tom Klassen of Memorial Restorations Inc. to uncover, clean, and stabilize these stones. Hans Vanderdoe, Vice Chair of Heritage Chatham-Kent and the co-organizer of the project with Devin Andrews, explains, “The students will gain an incredible appreciation of our rich local history and will learn hands-on techniques of preservation and archaeology while providing an important community service.” Several of the stones that we will work on have been buried beneath the soil for years and by re-exposing them, so too will the history and contributions of these early black settlers be rediscovered and remembered.

To date, thirty students have signed up to participate in the project that will take place in Maple Leaf Cemetery in Chatham on May 14 and 15, May 28 and 29, and June 4 and 5.