Harriet Tubman's church in Canada was a crucial force in the abolitionist movement. It's still standing today

The Guardian

19-06-2025

On a cold day in January 2024, Rochelle Bush walked up the steps of Salem Chapel, British Methodist Episcopal Church in St Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Bush, the owner and primary tour guide of Tubman Tours Canada and Salem Chapel's historian, moved quickly through the church pointing out the history, which spans across generations back to when the building was built centuries ago.
The church's roots stretch to about 1788 when Black people, many of whom were seeking freedom from slavery in the US, began to settle in the St Catharines area. Along with their hopes, dreams and plans for the future, these settlers, many of whom were followers of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and Richard Allen, a founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, brought their religions with them.
Bush, like many parishioners of Salem Chapel today, is a descendant of those people, whom she calls 'freedomseekers'. Through her tours, she seeks to keep the memory of the Black Americans who sought freedom in Ontario, and the lives they built on arriving there, alive.
Salem Chapel is one of the oldest Black churches in Ontario. Though it may not be widely known to most Americans or Canadians, its influence on both countries' history is undeniable. The church, which is still in use as a religious institution, is considered a sacred site and tourist destination because of its importance for people who participated in the Underground Railroad and for their descendants.
After the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which required that people who escaped slavery be returned to the people who enslaved them even if they had made it to a state in which slavery was illegal, the Black community in Ontario rapidly increased with the arrival of thousands of fleeing Black Americans.
The expanding community outgrew the church they were using to worship, and the congregation decided to build a larger church to serve the growing population. On 4 November 1855, the new African Methodist Episcopal Church, 'dedicated to the service of Almighty God', by Daniel Alexander Payne, an American bishop, was opened.
The church's pulpit is the original – the same one that Harriet Tubman, who lived in St Catharines for about a decade, Frederick Douglass and John Brown would have sat before as parishioners or would have spoken behind as lecturers. Display cases contain original wrought iron rails, and the pews upstairs date back to the 1800s – the lower-level pews are from the 1950s. There are other time-specific items, such as an original offering plate, a first edition copy of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, a union jack flag from around the 1880s and a first edition copy of the biography of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president.
St Catharines was known by prominent abolitionists, including Douglass, who wrote that the Underground Railroad had many branches, but that the one with which he was connected started in Baltimore and ended at St Catharines.
'He legitimized us as a final terminus on the Underground Railroad,' Bush said. 'We're the only ones in Canada that received that distinction. Thank God for Frederick Douglass.'
Salem Chapel and its community was a crucial force in the abolitionist movement –the church routinely held anti-slavery talks, its congregants protested enslavement and also provided aid and shelter to people who had crossed the Underground Railroad into Canada. With its close proximity to New York, and the Underground Railroad terminus in Rochester, where Frederick Douglass lived, the church became a meeting space for abolitionist leaders.
'The church was constructed when my family was living here, it was constructed when Harriet Tubman was living here,' Bush, who was born in St Catharines, told the Guardian. Black Americans who escaped enslavement 'wanted to put down roots and they wanted to secure their safety and freedom, because they knew that in the eyes of God, we're all the same, we're all equal. This church stands as a tribute to all of that'.
In late 2023, Salem Chapel became the first international listing in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program by the US National Park Service, an acknowledgment that formerly enslaved people's lives did not end with their journey into Canada.
'The Network to Freedom commemorates the courage, resilience and creativity of freedom seekers and provides insight to their struggles against oppression,' Chuck Sams, the National Park Service director, said in a statement at the time. 'Every listing added to the program moves us closer to telling a more complete and inclusive history of our nation and its quest to form a more perfect union.'
For Bush and other stewards of Salem Chapel, it is increasingly important that the church's storied history is preserved and perpetuated.
'Salem Chapel is a forgotten treasure in African American history,' Bush said. 'When it comes to the majority of American scholars, predominantly white, they write that the freedom seekers or the runaways or fugitives went north or they went to Canada, and then that's the end of their journey. No! There's a lot about their journey and where they settled here.'
Bush's great-great-grandfather Rev James Henry Harper was a free Black man from Columbia, South Carolina, who moved to St Catharines. He worked as a principal carpenter and minister at the church for a period of time during which Tubman was a frequent visitor. He and Bush's great-great-grandmother, Margaret Harper, also of Columbia, South Carolina, are both buried in St Catharines.
When Bush shows tourists around St Catharines and Salem Chapel, she's showing them buildings and places that are linked both to her own personal history, and to American and Canadian history at large.
'It's a thrill to be in here for me. Growing up, you don't appreciate it until you hear it from others,' Bush said.
When describing the work done by members of the church, even those from centuries past, Bush uses 'we', 'us' and 'our'. Her words, like her existence, are testimonies to the deep connection she feels and embodies with her Black American ancestors. Her work with the church and on her tours are also a testament to that connection.
On her tours, Bush communicates quickly and casually. Through her words, the vestiges of old Black St Catharines come to life, even though the neighborhood and town around the church have changed in the centuries since it was founded. Bush, a wellspring of knowledge, talks about the freedom-seeking ancestors, as if they are old friends, rattling off key dates and sites of interest.
One of the most prominent former residents of the province is also the tour's namesake: Harriet Tubman, whose niece and sister-in-law are buried in St Catharines.
'This was her main base of operation. The scholars today believe she made no less than 13 trips back and forth … We do know that this was her base of operation and she attended this church,' Bush said.
When people visit Salem Chapel, Bush said they're typically astounded by the fact that Tubman was once there, too.
'They want to touch the pews, and nobody leaves without touching the pulpit,' she said. 'Many are brought to tears. They say they feel the ancestral spirits in here. People are usually just blown away and they praise God that the church is still standing.'
One of the stories she shares is of John Brown, who Bush calls the 'greatest white abolitionist to ever live'. He was in St Catharines in April of 1858 to meet with Tubman for the first time. Tubman had previously dreamed about meeting Brown, according to WEB DuBois's biography of the leader, and when they actually met, she assisted him in planning the raid on Harpers Ferry.
Bush intertwines stories of the past with stories of the buildings that are still standing, contextualizing the shared histories of both. Bush's tour around St Catharines includes other significant, if surprising, American civil war history. She tells those who participate about Confederate soldiers who fought against the US in their treasonous effort and are now buried in St Catharines after fleeing persecution in the states. She shows attenders on the tour Niagara Bank, from which John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln, had an uncashed bank note when was captured.
But the focus of the tour is on the people who escaped slavery to make new lives for themselves.
Bush tells attenders about Anthony Burns, who was enslaved in Virginia and was the centerpoint of one of the largest abolitionist revolts in US history before eventually gaining his freedom and pastoring Zion Baptist Church in St Catharines. She shows them the burial site of John Lindsay, born in Washington DC and enslaved in Tennessee and Louisiana before eventually becoming one of the wealthiest men in Ontario.
A highlight of the tour is Richard Pierpoint, who was born in Senegal, captured and enslaved, and forcibly sent to the 13 colonies. There, he eventually gained his freedom by fighting with the British during the American revolution, and helped found the Colored Corps, Upper Canada's only unit comprised solely of men of African descent, during the war of 1812. Pierpoint eventually settled in Ontario, near St Catharines.
The joy people experience is often marked by sobriety and an acknowledgment of pain. Bush's tours do not shy away from the seriousness of the horrors from which enslaved Black Americans were fleeing.
'The focus is on Black history and what our ancestors were running away from,' she said. 'The raping on the plantation … The number one dynamic of enslavement was the separation of families. You had no voice, you had no say. … We mention that so everybody is on the same page because the idea now is to try to turn it into the yellow brick road and enslaved people had it good. No, we didn't.'
While some tours or sites that deal with locations and people who were either enslaved, enslavers, or otherwise involved with the institution of slavery choose to passingly allude to the horrors of enslavement, Bush sees it as a central and necessary component of ensuring guests understand the importance of the freedom seekers' actions, the lives they eventually built in Canada and what they left behind.
'There's nothing positive about slavery and the Underground Railroad,' she said. 'Whereas you go to other locations and they don't want to discuss the atrocities of what people were running away from and so they try to make it all happy and that's not telling the truth. That's not telling the story, so you can't do that. You have to let them know what people were running away from.'