Amy Pompadour
| Amy Pompadour | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Amy Pompadour's exact date of birth is unknown USA |
| Died |
1865[1] Toronto House of Industry, Toronto[1] |
| Nationality | Canada |
| Occupation | servant |
| Known for | has been described as "the last slave in Upper Canada" |
Amy Pompadour was a black woman, described as the last slave in Upper Canada.[2] According to Spacing magazine, Peter Russell, the Province's Inspector General, purchased her, her mother, Peggy; her brother, Jupiter; and her sister, Milly. Her father, known as Pompadour, was a free black, who also worked for Russell.[1] Amy Pompadour's exact date of birth is unknown, but some sources state she was born in 1780, while young Henry Scadding, who only arrived in York in 1821, described her as "tall and comely".[1]
James Cleland Hamilton speculated that since Russell tried to sell her mother and brother, but never tried to sell Amy, Russell saw her as more valuable, more cooperative, than the rest of her family.[3]
Henry Scadding, who arrived in York, Upper Canada, as a boy, in 1821, described her in his 1873 memoir as "tall and comely".
Amy, and her sister Milly, were given to Sophia Denison, the wife of John Denison, by Russell's sister, and heir, Elizabeth Russell, who was Denison's god-mother.[4][5][6]
Amy died, in 1865, in the Toronto House of Industry, when she was approximately eight-five years of age.[1]
References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4
Adrienne Shadd; Afua Cooper; Karolyn Smardz Frost (2009). "The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto!". Dundurn Press. p. 14. ISBN 9781770706828. Retrieved 2019-06-13.
Scadding, in his history of early Toronto, entitled Toronto of Old, notes that Amy Pompadour was one of several Blacks that people used to see around town when it was still called York. Scadding described her as a 'tall, comely, Negress...of servile descent" who, in the days when slavery was just dying out in Upper Canada, was quite a curiousity because of her slave status. It is not know what subsequently happened to Peggy, the rest of her children, of her husband, Pompadour.
- ↑
Adam Bunch (2017-09-05). "John Graves Simcoe's weird relationship with slavery". Spacing magazine. Retrieved 2019-06-13.
Peter Russell — a gambling-addict ex-con who Simcoe trusted as Receiver- and Auditor-General — enslaved a woman named Peggy Pompadour and her three children: Jupiter, Amy and Milly. Their acts of resistance were brutally punished by Russell: Jupiter was once bound and strung up in the window of a storehouse as a painful public humiliation. But Peter Russell is still remembered in the names of Peter Street and Russell Hill Road.
- ↑
James Cleland Hamilton (1904). "Osgoode Hall: Reminiscences ... of the ... bench and bar". Carswell publishing. Retrieved 2019-12-28.
When the Judges and their wives went to dine with Governor Peter Russell at Russell Abbey, his residence on Palace Street, the door was opened by a coloured boy, Jupiter. Amy Pompadour, a turbaned negress, waited on the ladies, and Black Peggy cooked the dinner. All these were slaves of the Governor. In 1806 he advertised two of these chattels for sale—“Peggy at $140, Jupiter at $200, one-fourth less for ready money.” Amy Pompadour seems to have been more regarded, and was in time given by Miss Russell to Mrs. Denison. These were “slaves for life,” and their status was not affected by the Act of 1793, but they would have been freed by the Imperial Act in 1834, in any case.
- ↑
Robert Evelyn Denison (March 1910). A history of the Denison family in Canada, 1792 to 1910 : for the use of members of the family only. Retrieved 2019-06-13.
Help for household work was very hard to get then as now, and we read that Miss Russel presented Mrs. John Denison with a negro female slave, Amy Pompadour, said to be the last slave ever legally held in Upper Canada.
- ↑
Afua Cooper (2018-11-06). "Elizabeth Russell Speaks of her Slave Peggy Pompadour*". Atlantic Books Today. 87. Retrieved 2019-12-31.
Peggy Pompadour and her children Amy, Milly, and Jupiter were held as slaves in the household of Peter and Elizabeth Russell of Toronto. Peter was a former administrator of the province of Upper Canada.
- ↑
"The Denisons". Kensington Market Historical Society. Archived from the original on 2015-08-11. Retrieved 2019-06-13.
Socially and economically, they benefited from their connection to the Russells; Sophia Denison even received a slave as a Christmas gift from Russell’s wife, reported to be that last legally owned slave in Upper Canada.
- ↑
Eric Ross Arthur; Stephen A. Otto (1986). "Toronto, No Mean City". University of Toronto Press. p. 27. ISBN 9780802065872. Retrieved 2019-06-13.
John Ross Robertson writes that 'Peter Russell owned and traded in slaves, despite his vigorous protection of the Indians.' Russell had six black servants, a slave Peggy, her free husband, and their four children, who were also slaves. These were divided between the farm on his hundred acre park lot and his town house. In the latter he usually had two or three black slaves and the same number of white servants. In 1806 he advertised in the Gazetted and Oracle 'to be sold, a black woman named Peggy, aged 40 years and a black boy, her son, named Jupiter, aged about 15 years, both of them the property of the subscriber ... They are each of them servants for life.' Within the memory of many in John Ross Robertson's day 'a pure negress call Amy Pompadour' lived in York who had been presented to 'Mrs. Captain Denison' by Miss Elizabeth Russell. Russell Abbey is remembered today by a shabby bywater called Abbey Lane, off King Street between Princess and Sherbourned streets.
<ref> tag with name "DenisonFamily" defined in <references> is not used in prior text.