Elliott Mansion And Old Slave House Below Amherstburg

Elliott Mansion And Old Slave House Below Amherstburg

Matthew Elliott was a wealthy white Loyalist who lived in Southwestern Ontario, and one of the richest and most merciless slaveowners in British North America. This historic illustration, made decades after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire (1834), shows what was left of his homestead near Amherstburg at the time. Alongside it stands a smaller building known as the “Old Slave House.” Once a living quarter for the numerous enslaved folks which Elliott owned, this location would later become one of numerous stops along the Underground Railroad in the years leading up to the abolition.

The size and placement of the “Slave House,” a segregated part of the household positioned in plain sight, helps visualize the living conditions of enslaved men, women, and children in colonial Canada: a lifestyle of constant surveillance extremely limited personal space.

Charles Forbes Warner

Warner, Charles Forbes. Elliott Mansion And Old Slave House Below Amherstburg. 1893. Southwestern Ontario Digital Archive. https://swoda.uwindsor.ca/node/1140

Picturesque Publishing Company

1893

Public Domain

Illustration