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CHAPTER 4 Community of Greenville: Earliest Black Settlement in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

The name Greenville is one of three once given to this community, earlier names being Salmon River and Riverdale. The names of some of the people who lived in the community between Porcupine Lake and Jebogue Lake are shown on the map¹ that was created in 1864. This tiny village, totally populated by Blacks, was known as Greenville as early as October 23, 1869, as is recorded on a land deed issued by George Gideon Dies to the trustees of the then-called African Church in Greenville. Today, the church is the Greenville United Baptist Church. Another deed dated February 4, 1911, states that Greenville was formerly known as Riverdale. The eastern limit of Greenville was defined by Salmon River Lake (sometimes known as Pleasant Lake), Salmon River, and Porcupine Lake.

Greenville was appropriately named more than one hundred years ago for the appearance of the surrounding vegetation of the time. The roughly built log houses with rags covering glassless windows were completely enshrouded in lush, thick trees, low-growing green bushes, and wild berry bushes. The community of Greenville was a pastoral, peaceful Eden for those who struggled to make a home for their families there. The gravel road into and out of this haven was no more than a horse-and-buggy trail. Although the road was widened somewhat with the invention of the motor car, there was scarcely enough room for two vehicles to pass each other, if indeed they could achieve even that.

Recorded history has Greenville first settled around 1820, the year David Dize was freed from his indenture to Nehemiah Porter. David Dize (Dyes, Dise) was a Black man originally from Kingston, Jamaica.² Born in 1798, he was the son of James Dize and Lydia Dize, also of Jamaica. Young David arrived in Yarmouth at the age of fourteen after having been placed on a man-of-war ship in Kingston.

A.F. Church was commissioned to create this very large map, approximately four feet by four feet, in March 1864. It is hanging on a wall in the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives. The names of the people who lived in the different communities of Yarmouth County and the town of Yarmouth appear on the map. According to the museum curator emeritus, Eric Ruff, the printing was completed in 1867.

Just over seventeen years of age in 1815, he signed an indenture placing himself apprentice to Nehemiah Porter Sr., the coroner for the town of Yarmouth. This indenture was for a little over four years, after which time David would be released from his servitude. As shown in the following document, among other stifling stipulations, the man was not even allowed to marry or have any close relationships whatsoever with a woman during the full four years of his indenture:

WITNESSETH, That DAVID DIZE (Black Man) Foreign Born, now residing in the Township of Yarmouth in the County of Shelburne Province of Nova Scotia, Freeman, Hath put, himself and by these Presents, Doth voluntarily, and of his own free will and accord, put himself APPRENTICE to NEHEMIAH PORTER, Senr. of the Township of Yarmouth County of Shelburne & province of Nova Scotia

To learn the Art, Trade and Mystery of as Menial Servent or the usual Nova Scotia occupations of an Husbandman as Common in Yarmouth and after the manner of an Apprentice, to serve from the day of the Date hereof, for and during and until the full End and Term of Four years Seven Months and Nine days or till he is 22 years old which will be on the 2d Jany 1820 next ensuing. During all which time, the said Apprentice his said master faithfully shall serve, his secrets keep, his lawful Commands every where readily obey; he shall do no damage to his said master, nor see it done by others, without letting or giving notice thereof to his said Master, he shall not waste his said Master’s Goods nor lend them unlawfully to any; shall not commit Fornication, or Matrimony contract, within the said Term; at Cards, Dice, or any other unlawful Game he shall not play whereby his said Master may have damage; With his own goods nor the Goods of others, without License from his said Master, shall he neither buy nor sell he shall not absent himself Day nor Night from his Master’s service, without his Leave, nor haunt Ale-houses, Taverns, or Play-houses; but in all things behave himself as a faithful Apprentice ought to do during the said Term. And the said Master shall use the utmost of his endeavour to teach or cause to be taught or instructed, the said Apprentice in the Trade and Mystery of a Menial’s servent or the usual occupations of an Husbandman as Common in Yarmouth —

And procure and provide him sufficient Meat, Drink, Apparel, Lodging, and washing, fitting for an Apprentice, during said Term of Four Years Seven Months and Nine days or till he is 22 years old which will be on the 2d Jany 1820, and at the Expiration of said apprenticeship shall give him One complete suit of Clothing over and above his every day Clothing

AND for the true Performance of and singular the Covenants and Agreements aforesaid, the said Parties do bind themselves each unto the other firmly by these Presents. In Witness whereof the said parties have interchangeably set their hands and seals here unto. Dated the Eighteenth Day of May in the Fifty fifth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Third by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, &c. Annoque Domini, One Thousand Eight

Hundred and Fifteen, /s/

Signed sealed and delivered, David [his X] Dize

in the Presence of

Benjm Bingay

Samuel C. Porter

Nehemiah Porter

Above registered by Benjamin Barnard, Notary Public

on 18 May 1815³

Now, David Dize was not a formally educated man. He was, however, clever enough to know how to survive. This man not only lived on for many years but became the strength and inspiration of the people who followed him and settled in the community of Greenville. Many of his followers had come with the Black Loyalists who settled in Shelburne and eventually made their way to Yarmouth County. They came to settle in a place that appeared to them to be a safe haven.

So it was that David Dize had become one of the spiritual leaders in this community of Greenville. “Reverend” Dize went on to serve his church and community faithfully for many years. During that time he and his wife took several children into their nurturing care, but when David passed away at the age of ninety-three in 1891, he was a resident of Yarmouth’s Poor Farm.⁴ It is possible that he is buried in Riverview Cemetery (established for the Poor Farm), but there is no record available. Although various other sources have his age at time of death as 106,⁵ the indenture he signed with Nehemiah Porter in 1815 states that David would be twenty-two years old on January 2, 1820, making his year of birth 1798, and his age at death as ninety-three.

Indenture of David Dize. This very old document outlines the conditions that David Dize had to follow after his indenture to Nehemiah Porter. Those conditions were very restricting to say the least, but knowing that he would be a free man at the end of his servitude, he obeyed them all.

Deacon David Dize, circa August 1, 1890. The foundation for David’s homestead is still visible. When the deputy warden for the Municipality of Yarmouth, Walter Churchill, was dictating notes about some of the residents in the municipality, one of the stories was that David Dize buried his wife halfway between the back of his house and Churchill’s Lake. It is not known which wife as David was married twice. In searching for this grave, I have found a location that could be one, but there is another location that also has been suggested as the site. The search continues.

One can only imagine the high hopes these people shared for a future in their beautiful country landscape as they began to rebuild their lives away from their former existence. As far as can be determined, Greenville was the first and only true home of many early Blacks.

SOLITUDE, HOPES, LOST DREAMS, POVERTY

Is that not what settling in a new place was all about? For some, yes, but for Blacks, it was most definitely! As it happened, these newcomers were not aware of what they would have to face resettling on foreign land. But most of them, like David Dize, were freed from their bondage to live where and how they chose, regardless of the hardships they were bound to face. If they could survive slavery they could survive anything, for being free was all that mattered to them now.

They had lost loved ones through that slavery, yes, but now that they were free they worked side by side to help one another rebuild their broken lives. They worked harder than ever, year after year, diligently tilling the soil with inadequate tools. They planted vegetables, hoping that this year the crop would sustain them through another cold winter. Men and women would have hunted side by side for the sustaining protein that the wild meat provided.

Unfortunately, things did not always go as planned. Babies were stillborn because mothers had to labour at men’s work for long, seemingly unending hours in order to survive. And what of the babies that did make it to full term, only to have their eyes closed forever because of poor crops or scarcity of game? Rickets, malnutrition, and diseases, for which they had no immunity and hence no cure, ran rampant among them.

DEATH

Death stalked them at every turn with little help from the outside communities. Nevertheless, belief in their God was what sustained them through the hell that was their lives. Their hopes, their dreams, their prayers, it seemed, were all they had to cling to. And yet, sometimes even prayers were not enough. Did some of them pray for that dark abyss called death when their new life became unbearable? What became of those who did pass into the next world?

GONE AND SADLY FORGOTTEN

When was the first soul laid to rest beneath the cold, hard ground next to the small, but effective church they had established in the community of Greenville? There are no records to tell us. What family mourned a loved one, only too soon to forget, with no permanent marker laid to identify this soul? The pattern continued for nearly a century. Bury the dead; forget the dead. From the 1850s to the early 1960s at least one hundred infants, toddlers, teenagers, and adults that have been identified were laid to rest in the Greenville Church Cemetery. There was never a cross, a headstone, or foot stone to say, “Oh, yes, Mrs. Falls is buried there. I know her grandchildren.”

Indeed, so closely were the caskets crammed together that when the last bodies were interred, gravediggers had to dig in several places until they found an empty lot in which to lay a soul at rest. As they dug grave after grave, time and time again their shovels would scrape one of the many caskets that were already buried there. Whose casket received the “tap, tap, tap” of the diggers’ shovels as they tried to find space for a new coffin? Did this lost soul’s spirit say “Enough is enough?” Or did it heave a sigh of resignation, knowing that one more was coming home to rest? Even today, parishioners of that tiny church, the Greenville United Baptist Church, park their vehicles on hallowed ground under which is the final resting home of many, a truth that is generally known.

The Greenville Church Cemetery was not the only place in this tiny community to succumb to overcrowding. The African Bethel Cemetery occupies the space on which once stood the African Bethel Church. There, too, may be more than one hundred Blacks, many of whose names are lost to history. Although it is called the African Bethel Cemetery, there are White families buried there, as well.

Unlike the Greenville Church Cemetery, the African Bethel Cemetery had a few stone monuments marking the graves showing us that someone cared enough to tell their loved ones, “You will not be forgotten.” Obviously, poverty played an enormous role in determining whether a family could put a monument on a loved one’s grave. Should makeshift crosses have been erected, the wood would have rotted away with time.

Two cemeteries in the community have been mentioned. How many and where are the people buried who died before the organization of the Greenville United Baptist Church or the African Bethel Church? How many backyards are home to how many dead? We will never know. Is the community of Greenville one huge cemetery? Every time a new basement was dug, did those old bones become backfill in that same basement? Did the building of my own home desecrate the resting ground of one of Greenville’s former residents? One can ask a million questions, but there will be no answers.

A story was told to me by Arvella Johnson (Mrs. George Johnson), a trustee for the Greenville Church. Before the church was enlarged, allowing for some change to the layout, whenever there was a funeral the caskets had to be lifted in and out through a side window. Because of where the door had been installed, it was impossible to manoeuvre the caskets through the door and around the corner. Ms. Belle (as she is affectionately called) also told me that the church cemetery surrounds the church like a horseshoe and the graves are almost to the road’s edge and as far as the church’s well to the right. To the left, the cemetery may have gone beyond the yellow house that now sits next to the church property.

MIDWIVES

It is recorded that Greenville had three midwives, the only three whose existence has been recorded. There would have been earlier midwives. In their turn, they took charge when babies could no longer wait for a doctor to come from town (Yarmouth). Nearly all babies born in Greenville, until the time that women were forced to go to the hospital, were brought into this world by midwives. Three of the women known to be the saviours of some of these pregnant women were: Ruth Hannah Johnson, Deborah Ann (Herbert) Wesley, and Mary Agnes (Jones) Johnson, affectionately known by all as “Nanny.”

Ruth Hannah Johnson, a midwife, photo circa 1941, was the matriarch of her family in the small community of Greenville. She loved children and family was all important to her. She helped raise, or indeed did raise, the children of one of her daughters. Ruth Hannah was my husband’s grandmother.

Ruth Hannah Johnson, born circa 1847, died on June 2, 1945, at age ninety-eight. According to the funeral ledger entry, Ruth Hannah was the daughter of George Crawford and Elizabeth Brown. She was born in Greenville, as was her father. Because of her advanced age when she passed away, it is assumed that she had been a midwife in the community of Greenville well into the 1870s and later. Those who remember her say that she was a robust woman and an extremely hard worker.

Deborah Ann (Herbert) Wesley, born on July 10, 1869, was the daughter of Harriet Jane (Herbert) Jones and Winston Tobin. She married Frederick Henry Wesley on June 20, 1894, in Greenville. Like those women who came before her and those who came after, Deborah Ann Wesley performed a much-needed service in her community. How many babies may not have survived without her caring presence? Deborah Ann passed away on May 5, 1938, at the age of sixty-nine.

Mary Agnes (Jones) Johnson was born April 15, 1908. The daughter of James Jones and Agnes Hubbard, she was baptised at St. Ambrose Catholic Parish on April 19, 1908. She married Clarence “Bampy” Johnson, a resident of Greenville, and in the 1950s was baptized into the Greenville United Baptist Church. Mary was a midwife for more than fifty years and brought many of today’s residents of Greenville into the world. She loved what she did and would help anyone who came knocking on her door, no matter the hour. On February 10, 1995, “Nanny” was honoured by the Black Cultural Society for Nova Scotia and was inducted into the cultural centre’s Wall of Honour. She died on September 2, 2001, at ninety-three years of age.