For the last twenty years he had been someone else’s property.
Ripped from his home as a teenager, he was taken and then enslaved in North America.
With no say in what happened to him, he was put to work in the house as a servant.
That seemed like a lifetime ago.
Now, he stood a free man alongside others like him in a forest ready to fight for the British against the Americans.
They instilled fear on their enemies as they stealthily passed through the trees in silence, only to pounce on their adversaries.
They were not just fighting for their lives; they were fighting to keep their freedom.
It wouldn’t be his last fight. Decades later another war erupted the British and Americans and once again he fought, even in his advanced age.
He was a Black Loyalist and in between waging war he helped create a community where he could prosper and live free.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I’m sharing the life of Richard Pierpoint, a Black Canadian who brought terror to Americans on the battlefield while fighting for his freedom in the face of prejudice and discrimination. [TRANSITION]
Before I begin… you should know that this story will be cast in a bit of a fog as many of the details in Richard Pierpoint’s life have been lost to history.
We know he was born around 1744 in Bundu, a West African state that existed for two centuries from 1690 to 1858, and its territory is part of modern-day Senegal.
We don’t know his name at birth, the name of his parents, or whether he had siblings. These are all lost to the mists of time because of one terrible thing.
Slavery.
The man who would be known as Richard Pierpoint was born during the Atlantic Slave Trade one of the most brutal and deadly, forced long-distance global migrations of all time.
From approximately 1526 to 1867, about 12.5 million captured men, women, and children were put on ships in Africa, and only 10.7 million arrived in the Americas. In the 16th year of his life, he was taken from his home, chained and forced to walk away from his home to an unknown future.
The number of people carried off from Africa reached 30,000 per year in the 1690s and 85,000 per year a century later and now he was one of these souls that had become nothing more than property for those who had captured him. It was a difficult journey with little rest, food or water. His freedom, a thing of the past, and life as he had known it was over. Once he reached the shore, he was loaded onto a ship, possibly the first he had ever seen, and crammed into the hold with hundreds of others.
It is likely that had heard stories of enslavers during his life and knew he would never return to his home. Despair would have already set in as he heard the cries of others within the ship’s dark interior.
While crossing the Atlantic, called the Middle Passage in the history of slavery, this young man watched those around him suffer.
It was dangerous and horrific. The sexes were separated; men, women, and children were kept naked, packed close together; and the men were chained for extended periods.
The sun became a distant memory as they traveled in cramped and disgusting conditions for 80 days. Many who got on that ship never reached North America. Their bodies were simply thrown overboard when they died.
About 12 percent of those who embarked did not survive the voyage
The young man survived and reached the shores of North America where everything around him was foreign, and he did not know where he was.
He had no time to come to terms with his surroundings before he knew it, he was dragged onto a stage in front of a crowd of white people.
They yelled in a language he didn’t understand. In the chaos he was ripped off the stage and handed over to a man wearing a red uniform.
A British officer named Pierpoint.
His birth name had been stripped away and was given a new one.
Richard Pierpoint.
As an enslaved person, he was expected to serve the house of the slaveholder and Richard was selected for domestic labour.
Typically, the enslaved workforce was divided into two broad categories: house servants and field hands.
Compared to the enslaved people living and working outside and in the fields, Richard had a better life.
Regardless of where he worked, he would’ve experienced what was known as seasoning when he first arrived at the Pierpoint home.
Seasoning was meant to turn enslaved people into obedient and subservient workers often through violent means with the goal of removing any memories and ensuring those enslaved felt inferior to their keepers.
Better or not, he was still working against his will, and life was hard and difficult.
But he endured.
For the next 22 years, little is known about him.
It is not known if he had married or had children during this time.
If he had, his family would not be his. They would be properties of his enslavers and could all be sold or traded at their will.
And we may have never known about Richard Pierpoint had it not been for a little thing called the American Revolutionary War.
The Thirteen Colonies of the future United States didn’t want to be part of the British Empire anymore and launched a revolution.
From April 19, 1775, to September 3, 1783, American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army under the command of George Washington to combat the British Army and its Loyalists.
When war began, the population of the Thirteen Colonies included an estimated 500,000 enslaved people.
In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation that promised freedom to any Patriot-owned slaves willing to bear arms on the side of the Loyalists.
Roughly 500 to 1,000 Black Loyalists fought for the British, nearly all of them formerly enslaved.
Richard Pierpoint was one of them.
By the time he joined the fight, Richard was already a free man but how he gained that freedom is unknown.
There are two possible scenarios.
The first is that he escaped enslavement and enlisted, which would have given him freedom.
The second is that he joined the Loyalists’ cause with his enslaver, who was a British officer and during his service in the army was granted freedom.
However it happened, Richard first appears in the historical record as a member of Butler’s Rangers.
Fighting primarily in upstate New York and northeastern Pennsylvania, Butler’s Rangers was a force of 570 Loyalists in 10 companies led by John Butler, a veteran of the French and Indian War.
They took part in numerous raids in the northern frontier of the war and Richard was one of about a dozen Black Loyalists who fought with them.
They attacked the Patriots using guerilla tactics from their base in Fort Niagara. The Rangers wore green jackets and buff leggings to blend into the trees only emerging y to attack and catch the Americans off guard.
They also disrupted their supply chains to halt any American advances towards Canada.
Richard Pierpoint and the Rangers gained a reputation for being ruthless on the battlefield.
In July 1778, fighting alongside the Cayugas and Senecas, the Rangers attacked a force of 350 American Patriots at Forty Fort in Pennsylvania.
They killed 300 soldiers and burned down hundreds of homes.
This was a pattern they repeated throughout the war.
The Americans accused them of atrocities, the British praised them for their bravery.
After the war, like the rest of the Loyalists in Butler’s Rangers, Pierpoint was given 200 acres near present-day St. Catharine’s, Ontario.
As a private he was only entitled to 100 acres, but for some reason he was given double that amount.
One possible reason was that John Butler saw him as a non-commissioned officer or wanted to reward his bravery in battle.
With his war service officially done in 1784, Richard was officially a free man.
For the first time since he was stolen from his home at the age of 16, he had no one to answer to, and no commander to follow. It was likely an unusual feeling for him to have his own life, and to make his own decisions.
His journey to freedom began with a 20 kilometre walk to his homestead.
Upon arriving Richard began to improve the land by clearing the trees and rocks, which was no easy task.
One tree could take 20 minutes to cut down, and there were hundreds of them on his property. Then each log had to be hauled away, and the stump torn from the ground.
Rocks numbered in the hundreds per acre, and every rock had to be cleared to make the land suitable for farming.
Like many other Black Loyalists, Richard cleared the land alone because no white settler would be willing to help.
This bothered him.
He knew the power of community, and how working together could help everyone prosper.
Richard wanted Black Loyalists to work together to build up their land, and to limit the feeling of isolation they all felt while surrounded by white settlers.
He saw the Scots and Germans given the ability to settle together, and he believed Black settlers could have the same right.
By this point, between 500 and 700 Black settlers were living in Upper Canada. Some were free like Richard Pierpoint, and others were brought to Canada as enslaved peoples with white Loyalists.
In 1794, Richard signed the Petition of Free Negroes along with 18 other Black men from the Niagara region asking Lt. Governor John Simcoe for the opportunity to create a Black community.
The petition reads in part,
“That there are a number of Negroes in this part of the Country many of whom have been Soldiers during the late war between Great Britain and America, and others who were born free with a few who have come into Canada since the peace, -Your Petitioners are desirous of settling adjacent to each other that they may be enabled to give assistance in work to those amongst them who may most want it.”
Lt. Governor Simcoe was an ardent abolitionist, just a year earlier in 1793 he attempted to abolish slavery in Upper Canada through the Act Against Slavery.
It was watered down by members of the Legislative Assembly, many of whom were slaveholders, and they only agreed to ban the importation of enslaved people and freed children born into slavery at the age of 25.
Possibly due to the failure of the Act Against Slavery and the hostility it created in the government, Simcoe turned down the petition.
He denied Black Loyalists the ability to settle together.
Richard Pierpoint had no choice but to continue to work his land alone.
He finally cleared it in 1804 but sold it two years later and for the next five years he laboured for local landowners.
And he may have continued as such except once again war beckoned him.
Richard Pierpoint was headed to the battlefront.
On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on Britain once more and invaded Upper and Lower Canada.
The Americans believed that winning would be as simple as marching across the border, but it proved to be much more difficult than that.
When the war began, Richard Pierpoint was in his late-60s. He had spent the first part of his life enslaved, only to fight in a war and labour on his land and the land of others. Now it was time to fight once more.
This time Richard proposed to Major General Sir Isaac Brock, the commander of the British forces in Upper Canada he organize a Black regiment.
They would fight for the British army on the Niagara frontier.
Brock refused.
But then a month later, Brock changed his mind.
He was in need of more troops, and he looked to Captain Robert Runchey, a white tavern keeper from Jordan, Upper Canada to form a Black corps for the British army.
Runchey was already serving with the Second Flank Company of the First Lincoln Regiment of Militia, and they were happy to see him go because he wasn’t well liked by his men or fellow officers.
Lt. Colonel Ralph Clench said he was a black sheep of the regiment, and they were glad to be rid of him.
Runchy left to form his new company and was joined by his son, Lt. George Runchy, who became his second-in-command.
Black men joined quickly, including Richard Pierpoint, who, despite being nearly 70, likely believed that by serving again he could help create more opportunities for Black soldiers.
Captain Runchey’s force was meant to be a Black corps, but no Black soldier was ever an officer in the company. As with so much else in their lives, Black soldiers would only be commanded by white officers.
Which would prove challenging since Captain Runchey was a poor leader. He insisted on segregating Black soldiers and rented out Black soldiers as servants to other officers to pad his own wallet.
On Oct. 13, 1812, Richard and the company fought at the Battle of Queenston Heights where they helped recapture the Redan Battery following the death of Major General Sir Isaac Brock in the battle.
A description of the battle stated the men fought with great spirit and, quote.
“Fired a single volley with considerable execution, and then charged with a tremendous tumult”.
Fighting as light infantry, the Black regiment suffered no casualties but what’s interesting is that Captain Runchey made himself absent in the morning of the battle hoping to avoid it.
The company was instead commanded temporarily by Lt. James Cooper.
Captain Runchey soon resigned as commander and went back to running his tavern where he remained until his death in 1819.
Following the battle, the Black regiment was stationed at Fort George in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
The fort was built in the 1790s and was beginning to show its age so the regiment worked to improve the fortifications while also training as soldiers.
This proved to be a very good idea because on May 25, 1813, Fort George was attacked by an American force of 4,000 men, 12 gunboats and a brig-of-war.
The fort only had 1,000 regular infantry and 300 militia, some of whom were part of the Black regiment.
During the battle, the Black corps defended the fort, firing on the Americans who at one point were only six metres away from them.
In the end the sheer number of American troops forced them to withdraw and admit defeat.
The battle was a disaster for the British.
Over 100 men were killed, nearly 200 were wounded and 300 were captured but only one member of Black regiment was killed, James Walker while Anthony Hutts, was taken prisoner and died in captivity.
Richard and the rest of the Black regiment were able to escape the battle.
Once they were able to rejoin the British, the regiment was put to work on what became Fort Mississauga.
It was hard and dangerous work that had to be done in the cover of darkness to avoid detection by the Americans.
The men succeeded and one British officer said,
“Mississauga is a pretty little fort and would prevent vessels coming up the river.”
For the rest of 1813 and 1814, the unit was engaged in minor skirmishes on the Niagara Peninsula and lost three members in a raid on June 16, 1813.
In 1815, Richard was honourable discharged from service and returned to work as a labourer.
He had lived a hard life, fought in two wars, and spent most of his adult life working for others.
He knew that time was running out to achieve what he wanted and that return home.
To go back to Bundu in Africa, the land he was taken from over five decades earlier.
On July 21, 1821, he petitioned Lt. Governor Peregrine Maitland and requested that he be allowed to return, and that the government pay for the cost of passage.
He wrote quote,
“That Your Excellency’s Petitioner is now old and without property; that he finds it difficult to obtain a livelihood by his labour; that he is above all things desirous to return to his native Country; that His Majesty’s Government be graciously pleased to grant him any relief, he wishes it may be by affording him the means to proceed to England and from thence to a Settlement near the Gambia or Senegal Rivers, from whence he could return to Bondu.”
Lt. Governor Maitland denied Richard’s request.
Instead, Richard and several other veterans of the company were offered 100 acres of land outside present-day Fergus.
Like other Black soldiers, the land given to Richard was of poor quality and difficult to work.
On July 30, 1822, he was given his land ticket but to get full ownership of the land, which was covered in old growth forest, Richard needed to clear five acres of trees, clear a road to the plot and build a house. Over the next three years, Richard cleared the land, likely with the help of other Black settlers, many of whom may never have known Africa.
Richard became a storyteller and told them traditional stories of his home, its history, and its people.
He may not have been allowed to return to Africa, but he brought some of it to North America through his stories.
And then much like at the beginning the end of Richard Pierpoint’s life is cloudy, and details are lost to history.
At some point before September 1838, Richard Pierpoint died, and it is not known where he is buried.
He had never married and had no children.
In his will, written in 1828, he left his property to his friend Lemuel Brown, who lived in the area.
Lemuel sold it to a neighbouring farmer.
And so ended the extraordinary life of Richard Pierpoint.
In 2012, the story of Richard was turned into a Heritage Minute.
One year later, a federal building in London, Ontario was named after him.
In 2020, Richard Pierpoint was made a National Historic Person by the Government of Canada.
But you might be wondering what happened to the rest of Black regiment that Richard was part of during the War of 1812?
Following the end of the war., on March 24, 1815, Captain Runchey’s Company of Coloured Men was disbanded.
Two decades later in 1837, the legacy of the Company of Coloured Men was reborn when a Black regiment was organized in Niagara during the Upper Canada Rebellion. Once again, hundreds of Black soldiers volunteered to serve Upper Canada and fight for the British.
They formed Black companies in Chatham, Toronto, Hamilton, Windsor and across the Niagara border.
On Dec. 8, 1837, a force of 1,000 volunteers attacked rebels at the Battle of Montgomery’s Tavern.
Fought on the present-day intersection of Yonge and Eglinton in Toronto, the British and Canadian force included 120 Black soldiers under the command of Colonel Samuel Jarvis.
It is possible that a few kilometres away, an old man who had been taken from his home as a teenager, and fought in two wars for the British, was sitting on his property, hearing about a new group of Black soldiers who were fighting to defend their country.
That is the legacy of Richard Pierpoint, and it is quite possible that a smile spread across his face when he reflected on the strength and tenacity of his fellow soldiers.
We can also only assume that it would be bittersweet because as a new battle raged on, he knew Black men would sacrifice themselves for a land not quite their own.
