In a matter of just three years, it has become one of the most interesting and historically significant events held each year across Wellington County.
And this year, the Underground Railroad Music Festival is expected to be even bigger and better. The third annual festival will take place on Aug. 13 from 12 to 7pm at Centennial Park in Drayton.
“People are really looking forward to this – it’s a unique festival,” said organizer and renowned blues singer Diana Braithwaite.
Held in honour of the Underground Railroad and the black pioneers of the Queen’s Bush Settlement, the festival was moved from Glen Allan due to construction planned this summer in the hamlet.
But Braithwaite, herself a direct descendant of escaped slaves who settled in the Mapleton Township area, said the change in venue shouldn’t impact the festival in any way.
“Judging from the last two years, [the festival] always had a really wonderful feeling about it. It’s really positive and upbeat,” she said.
“It has really grown each year and it’s getting more popular. I expect a really good turnout this year.”
The 2011 festival
As usual, this year’s Underground Railroad Music Festival is open to everyone. Tickets are $30 for adults and $10 for youths aged 12 to 17 (kids accompanied by an adult are free).
Tickets will be available at the gates the day of the festival, but Braithwaite is encouraging everyone to get tickets in advance at ticketscene.ca.
Those in attendance can expect to be entertained by some very popular and talented musicians and singers, including Braithwaite herself and fellow returnees Chris Whiteley (performing with his son, Jesse Whiteley, and their “Big 40s Swing Band”) and Chicago native Douglas Watson.
Newcomers to the festival will include:
– Harrison Kennedy, who Braithwaite calls “our award -winning king of acoustic blues”;
– North Carolina’s Curley Bridges, who is still performing R&B and rock tunes at the age of 77;
– Kevin Breit, of Elora, who has several Juno and Gemini Awards to his name;
– Mississippi blues singer “Miss Angel” Brown;
– Donovan Locke, who Braithwaite calls “the next Nat King Cole crooner”;
– The Mississippi Gospel Singers; and
– inspirational speaker Pastor Tim Bailey, also from Mississippi.
The festival will also offer a barbecue and refreshments this year, incorporating the theme of “soul food,” and those in attendance are asked to bring their own lawn chairs, in keeping with the intimate seating arrangements at last year’s event.
Throughout the festival, speakers will also offer stories and information about the Underground Railroad, “how it really worked, and the rich history in the area,” Braithwaite said.
She added audience members will be impressed with the calibre of speakers and performers, many of whom will travel long distances to take part in the event.
“I’ve asked them to come up here just for this festival,” she said, adding the performers were more than happy to oblige.
Festival inception
Credit for the birth of the Underground Railroad Music Festival should rest solely with its main organizer.
“Diana Braithwaite has poured her heart and soul into this festival,” Chris Whitely told the crowd at last year’s event. “We really need to thank her.”
Given her connection to escaped slaves from the U.S. who settled in the Queen’s Bush area in southwest Mapleton, Braithwaite had always wanted to do something in the area to recognize that rich and unique heritage.
“I think it has been a bit of history that hasn’t been really well known,” she said. “I’m proud that, as an African-Canadian, I have a link to this history.”
And considering the importance of music to freed slaves, as well as her own natural abilities, the idea for a musical festival seemed a natural fit for Braithwaite.
“I just thought, ‘Here’s something positive we can put out to the world and celebrate’,” she said.
In what could be viewed as the festival’s precursor, in 2008 Braithwaite (joined by Chris Whiteley, with whom she has recorded several successful albums) performed several “Negro spirituals” at a special ceremony in Glen Allan to unveil a plaque honouring the Queen’s Bush settlement.
The idea for a festival continued to grow from there, and with the help of a $1,000 donation from Mapleton Township, the first event – at the time called the Traditional Music Festival – was held on July 11, 2009.
Also providing in-kind support for the first two festivals were the township, Wellington County, the Ontario Black History Society, Wellington County Historical Society, Mapleton Historical Society, the Harriet Tubman Resource Centre and the Black Pioneer Descendants of the Wellington County Historical Society.
Several hundred attended last year’s event, including some from as far away as Ottawa, Nova Scotia and the U.S., and even more are expected at the 2011 festival.
Braithwaite continues to be impressed with the level of support for the festival locally in Mapleton Township and Wellington County.
“I think people there feel quite proud about that history,” she said. Plus, locals who attended the first two festivals told her they had a great time and loved the music.
“It’s been very encouraging,” she said of the local support.
The history
Beginning in 1833, a stream of African American refugees, primarily freed blacks from the northern states, settled in what was then known as the Queen’s Bush.
The settlement was unique in the context of other black settlements, which were established agricultural areas or urban centres.
The Queen’s Bush was then an isolated area and during its first decade, well beyond the fringe of settlement. Reliable transportation facilities to the area did not begin to appear until the mid-1850s.
Braithwaite noted the black settlers were among the first individuals to clear local land and start farms. The adjustment to subsistence agriculture was likely a difficult one for the settlers, most of whom were unaccustomed to cold winter weather.
But the industrious settlers persevered, building schools, churches, roads and a vibrant community life, with Glen Allan, Hawkesville and Wallenstein as important centres.
“I feel really proud and inspired by what they were able to do in the face of such adversity,” Braithwaite said.
The first black migrants to the future Peel-Wellesley boundary area came from an ill-fated black settlement 18 miles to the south in Woolwich Township, near the present hamlet of Winterbourne, and known as Colbornesburg. It was founded in 1829 by Paola Brown, leader of a group of fugitive slaves and free blacks from Ohio.
At its peak in 1840, the Queen’s Bush settlement was home to about 2,000 black settlers; almost all escaped slaves and immigrants from the United States.
It was the largest concentration of black settlers in Ontario, encompassing an area about 12 miles by eight miles, in what would become Woolwich and the southern portion of former Peel Township.
By the 1860s, most of the blacks in what had then become Peel worked as labourers or domestic help for nearby farmers, or in one of the small shops or mills set up by white settlers.
The Queen’s Bush settlement died out almost quickly as it began, after the government ordered the area surveyed and black settlers could not afford to buy the land on which they had settled.
And when slavery was abolished in the U.S. in 1865, most returned to their native land. Yet some black settlers remained in Peel Township, with several continuing to farm well into the 20th century. A few descendants of those settlers still live in Waterloo and Wellington, but most are widely dispersed across Ontario and beyond.
“Those family names have appeared in all different walks of life,” said Braithwaite.
Among those names is Aylestock, the maiden name of her mother, Rella Braithwaite.
The Aylestock family
William Aylestock and Minnie Lawson both grew up on farms in the Queen’s Bush settlement near Glen Allan.
William was the only child on his 200 acre farm and Minnie was one of 17 children. The two eventually married and had eight children. After marriage, they stayed a short period in the Queen’s Bush and lived near several German families.
The Germans apparently referred to the Aylestocks as good neighbours and they often helped each other when the fields had to be threshed. After threshings, the story goes, the men would visit the Aylestocks to enjoy some of Minnie’s famous pies.
William and Minnie’s first five children were born in Glen Allan, and the last three were born in the hamlet of Lebanon (also in Mapleton Township), where the Aylestocks owned seven and a half acres. William worked in construction and also helped on other farms.
The accomplishments of some of the Aylestock children are quite extraordinary.
Addie Aylestock was the eldest child. In 1951, she became the first ordained black woman in Canada. She remained involved with the church until she passed away in 1998. Today, a plaque in her honour hangs in the Mapleton Township council chamber.
Lloyd Aylestock was an engineer and the first black to be hired at the Avro Aircraft plant in Toronto in 1938. Frank Aylestock was a WWII veteran who later taught electronics.
Rella Braithwaite (nee Aylestock), at age 12 was the only black student attending Listowel High School. She enjoyed an accomplished career as a writer, journalist and civil rights activist.
‘Coming home’
Returning to the Mapleton Township area for the first time can be an emotional journey for descendents of freed slaves and Queen’s Bush pioneers.
At last year’s Underground Railroad Music Festival, Virginia Adamson recounted that exact experience.
“I was overwhelmed by a strong sense of pride and the feeling of coming home,” Adamson said of her first visit to the area in 2008.
Braithwaite said she often has similar feelings when she visits the area where her ancestors first settled in search of a better life.
In recognition of that connection, the 2011 festival will have a welcome table for descendents of the Underground Railroad and Queen’s Bush settlement, and the list will be read aloud to recognize those individuals.
“It’s a really emotional experience,” Braithwaite said. “Apart from the music, that experience is going to be really something, too.”
But she stressed the festival is an important event for all locals and visitors, including those with no personal connection whatsoever to the Underground Railroad or early black settlers.
“It’s definitely a festival for everyone – it’s very inclusive,” she said. “It’s a celebration … There’s nothing sad about it. It’s about celebrating and being proud and remembering things and making history.”
For more information about the Underground Railroad Music Festival, visit www.braithwaiteandwhiteley.com and click on “Music Festival.”
– with files from Guelph Museums and Stephen Thorning
