Josiah Henson
Norman
Plummer was a strong and self-reliant man of deliberate thought and quiet wisdom.
He was an automobile mechanic who supported his family working as the night
maintenance custodian in the now defunct General Motors Training Center in Clarence,
NY. He, his Canadian-born wife Olive and family lived at 94 Kingsley Street,
Buffalo, near the old mansard roof Deaconess Hospital building. "Some shine
shoes, but I shine floors." Every day he repolished floors for the shoes
to walk on. He also sold shoes. Everyone who knew Norman eventually wore Knapp
Shoes ordered from him by catalogue.
He was an engaging conversationalist who always had well-considered
opinions on current events during those turbulent days of the mid and late 1960s.
Over his preferred refreshment, Pink Catawba & Canada Dry, he would share
his insights into civil rights issues, and talk about how things were changing
in "the old country" by which he meant not Europe but the deep South.
One time, after he had expressed personal reservations about a
then prominent civil rights figure, Norman was asked if it was because he considered
that person to be "an Uncle Tom."
"No, I don't. He doesn't deserve to be called `Uncle Tom'."
Norman Plummer became uncharacteristically agitated. It upset him to hear that
name "Uncle Tom" used as a negative. He said the real Uncle Tom a
hero, but people don't understand this. When asked why he was getting so upset
about a fictional character in a novel, "not even a real guy," he
answered that the character was based on a real escaped slave who was a model
of resourcefulness and ingenuity, and an everpresent inspiration to him personally.
"My wife and our children are direct descendants of that great man."
The
escaped slave's name was Josiah Henson. Harriet Beecher Stowe had based her
character on the story of Josiah Henson's own account of his life published
in 1849. It was, not the novel, but the hack minstrel show caricatures of Uncle
Tom that gave him the bad rap.
Truth Stranger Than Fiction: Father Henson's Story of His
Own Life deserves to be more widely read. It is the inspiring story of
the incredible achievements of a resourceful man who spent 42 years as a slave
before he escaped with his whole family to freedom in Canada. They crossed the
Niagara River on the Black Rock ferry in 1830. After working in the Fort Erie
area for four years, he "traveled on foot all over the extensive region
between lakes Ontario, Erie and Huron" looking for a place to create a
permanent settlement. In 1842, he founded the Dawn Settlement in southwestern
Ontario. He built and operated a sawmill at which he produced choice hardwood
boards that he sold to furniture manufacturers in New England and New York City.
In Boston, he sold a shipment of eighty thousand board feet of "good prime
black walnut lumber, sawed in our mill" to Mr. Jonas Chickering for his
new piano factory.
Josiah Henson made several trips into the American south to escort
slaves to freedom in Canada. He set the number of those he delivered out of
bondage at one hundred and eighteen. When Henson heard of the great Crystal
Palace exposition to be held in London, England, he decided to participate.
He selected four large black walnut boards "excellent specimens, about
seven feet in length and four feet in width, of beautiful grain and texture"
to be crated and shipped to London for the exhibition. He noted that although
there were some Africans brought there as part of exhibits, he was the only
Negro exhibitor. In London he met the Queen, was awarded a bronze medal for
his exhibit and had an extended one-on-one audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The archbishop asked him where he had been educated to learn to speak so well.
Henson responded that he had attended "the university of adversity"
The
Dawn Settlement is now a historic site near Dresden, Ontario. Called "Uncle
Tom's Cabin Historic Site," it is dedicated to reclaiming the positive
reputation of the real Uncle Tom. Josiah Henson's restored 1840s home is open
to the public during the summer season. Canada has further recognized the importance
of Josiah Henson by creating a stamp bearing his image.
Henson's account of reaching freedom is a moving one, of particular
importance to us since it is part of our regional history. The fugitive family,
after a series of heartstopping experiences, reached sight of the southern shore
of Lake Erie near Sandusky, Ohio. Henson spotted a sailing vessel loading grain.
Hiding his wife and children in the woods, he approached the vessel and took
a place in a line of laborers "next to a colored man and got into conversation
with him."
"How far is it to Canada?" He
gave me a peculiar look, and in a minute I saw he knew all. "Want to go
to Canada? Come along with us, then. Our captain's a fine fellow. We'er going
to Buffalo." "Buffalo; how far is that from Canada?." "Don't
you know, man? Just across the river."
The captain, a Scotchman named Burnham, offered to carry the Henson
family to Buffalo.
A fine run brought us to Buffalo the next
evening, but it was too late to cross the river that night. The next morning
we dropped down to Black Rock. "You see those trees" said the noble
hearted captain "they grow on free soil, and as soon as your feet touch
that you're a mon. I want to see you go an be a freeman." "Here Green,"
he said to the ferryman; "what will you take this man and his family over
for - he's got no money." "Three shillings." He took a dollar
out of his pocket and gave it to me. He stood waving his hat as we pushed off
for the opposite shore. God bless him! God bless him eternally! Amen!
It was the 28 of October, 1830, in the morning,
when my feet first touched the Canadian shore. I threw myself on the ground,
rolled in the sand, seized handfuls of it and kissed them, danced round till,
in the eyes of several who were present, I passed for a madman.
With
the help of computerized vessel records and the clues given in the text it is
most likely the vessel which brought Josiah Henson to Buffalo was the two-masted
schooner "Commerce" of Buffalo, built at Sandusky, Ohio in 1825. The
72-foot-long vessel was enrolled at the Port of Buffalo in September 1830 with
John Burnham as Captain. (Hiram Pratt of Buffalo was an owner.) In 1836, John
Burnham was captain of the steamboat William Penn. He died in Buffalo in 1837.
In view of the Josiah Henson event, let alone the several
thousands of fugitive slaves that subsequently reached freedom in Fort Erie,
it is highly appropriate that the founders of The Niagara Movement held the
formative meeting of that organization on the beach at Fort Erie. Two thousand
and five marks the one-hundred-year anniversary of the organization that evolved
into the NAACP (See Winter 2004
WNY Heritage.)
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