88 CxVNADIAN LOCAL HISTOET. 



coloured cloth coat and leather breeches. Whoever takes up and secures the said negro, so 

 that his master may have him again, shall have Four Dollars reward, and all reasonable charges 

 paid, by John MoCord. Speaks very bad English and next to no French." Another reads 

 thus : " To be sold, a healthy Negro Boy, about fifteen years of age, well qualified to wait on a 

 gentleman as a Body Servant. For farther particulars inquire of the Printers." 



Mr. Sol. General Gray, lost in the Speedy, manumitted by his wUl, dated August 27th, 1S03, 

 and discharged from the state of slavery in which, as that document speaks, "she now is," his 

 "faithful black woman servant, Dorinda," and gave her and her children their freedom ; and, 

 that they might not want, directed that £1200 should be invested and the interest applied to 

 their maintenance. To his black servants, Simon and John Baker, he gave, besides their 

 freedom, 200 acres of land each, and pecuniary legacies. The Simon here named went down 

 with his master in the Speedy ; but John long survived. He used to state that his mother, 

 Doi'inda, was a native of Guinea, and to describe Governor Hunter as a rough old warrior, who 

 carried snufl' in an outside pocket, whence he took it in handfuls, to the great disfigurement of 

 his ruffled shirt-bosoms. His death was announced in the public papers by telegram from 

 Cornwall, Ontario, bearing date January 17, 1871. "A colored man," it said, "named John 

 Baker, who attatued his 105th year on the 25th ult. , died here to -day. He came here as a chattel 

 of the late Colonel Gray, in 1792, having seen service in the Bevolutionary war. Subsequently 

 he served throughout the war of 1812. He was wounded at Lundy's Lane, and has drawn a 

 pension for fifty seven years." Mr. Gray, it may be added, was a native of our Canadian town 

 of Cornwall. His place of abode in York was in what is now Wellington Street, on the lot 

 immediately to the west of where the old " CouncU Chamber" (afterwards the residence of Chief 

 Justice Draper) stood. 



We ourselves, we remember, used to gaze, in former days, with some curiosity at the pure 

 negress. Amy Pompadour, here in York, knowing that she had once been legally made a present 

 of by Miss Elizabeth Russell to Mrs. Captain. Denison. 



But enough of the subject of Canadian slavery, to which we have been inadvertently led. 



The old Court. House, when abandoned by the law authorities for the new buildings on King 

 • Street, was afterwards occasionally employed for religious purposes. By an advertisement in 

 the Advocate, in March, 1834, we learn that the adherents of David Willson, of Whitchurch, 

 sometimes made use of it. It is there announced that "The Children of Peace will hold 

 Worship in the Old Court House of York, on Sunday, the 16th instant, at Eleven and Three." 

 ^Subsequently it became for a time the House of Industry or Poor House of the town. 



Besides the legal cases tried and the .judgments pronounced within the homely walls of the 

 Old Court House, interest would attach to the curious scenes— could they be recovered and 

 described — that there occurred, arising sometimes from the primitive nisticity of juries, and 

 ■sometimes from their imperfect mastery of the English language, many of them being, as the 

 German settlers of Markham and Vaughan were indiscriminately called, Dutchmen. Peter 

 Ernest, appearing in court with the verdict of a jury of which he was foreman, began to 

 preface the same with a number of peculiar German-English expressions which moved Chief 

 Justice Powell to cut him short by the remark that he should have to commit him if he swore ; 

 when Ernest observed that the perplexities through which he and the jury had been endea- 

 vouring to find their way were enough to make better men than they were express themselves 

 in an unusual way. The verdict, pure and simple, was demanded. Ernest then announced 

 that tlae verdict which he had to deliver was, that half of the jury were for "guilty" and half 

 for " not guilty." That is, the Judge observed, you would have the prisoner half-hanged, or the 

 half of him hanged. To which Peter replied, that would be as his Lordship pleased. It was a 

 case of homicide. Being sent back, they agreed to acquit. Odd passages, too, between perti- 

 nacious counsel and nettled judges sometimes occurred, as when Mr. H. J. Boulton. fre.sh from 

 Inner Temple, sat down at the peremptory order of the Chief Justice, but added, " I wUl sit 

 down, my Lord, but I shall instantly stand up again." Chief Justice Powell, when on the 

 Bench, had a humorous way, occasionally, of radicating by a kind of quiet by-play, by a gentle 

 •«hake of the head, a series of little nods, or movements of the eye or eyebrow, his estimate of 

 an outre hypothesis or an ad captandum argument. This was now and then disconcerting to 

 advocates anxious to figure, for the moment, in the eyes of a simple-minded jury, as oracles of 

 ■ extra authority. —Nights, likewise, there would be to be described, passed by juries in the 



