American Historical Ephemera & Photography, including African Americana

Typed circular undersigned in print by Israel LEWIS. Auburn, Cayuga Co., NY, 9 June 1830.

One page, 6 7/8 x 11 3/8 in. Manuscript address panel on verso, postmarked at Auburn, NY.

Israel Lewis writes, as an agent of the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Colour, asking church leaders to take up a collection on Sunday, the 4th of July, for the benefit of the settlement at Wilberforce in the Province of Upper Canada.

In part: "In consequence of the law of the legislature of Ohio, passed in 1807, and enforced in 1829, requiring all coloured people to leave that state, under severe pains and penalties, a Colonization Company was formed in Cincinnati, in the last year; and under the sanction, friendly advice and counsel of his Excellency, the Governor of Upper Canada, a purchase was made in the above named tract, of 80,000 acres of land, for the sum of 120,000 dollars, payable in ten years. About 1100 emigrants, old and young, left the state of Ohio, and crossed Lake Erie late last autumn, considering themselves compelled by legislative authority to do so. A portion of these emigrants are now actively engaged in clearing the land and building log habitations...Others also are preparing to follow them, and it is confidently expected, that there will be rapid accessions to the settlement...He would most respectfully urge your consideration of the immediate wants of the settlement. Destitute as the coloured people generally are--late as their forced movement was in the last season, and the dense wilderness they have to clear, it must be obvious that the settlement cannot subsist without the friendly aid of the white people in the states contiguous to it. Provisions, clothing, and many utensils will be needed, before they can gather any returns from their labor."

In response to mounting racism against the increasing population of free Black residents in Cincinnati, the city's Black community selected two representatives, Thomas Crissup and Israel Lewis, to go to Canada in June of 1829, for the purpose of buying land and securing permission for a settlement where they could live freely. The resulting settlement was Wilberforce Colony in present-day Ontario, to which many free Black family groups emigrated amidst harsh Black Codes and violent riots erupting in Cincinnati that August.