Help requested please! Possible Quaker or connection to Underground Railroad?

Question

Hi everyone! I'm looking for some help!

I'm helping another WikiMember who is researching a Hall family.

I have started a profile for the patriarch, William Hall. By all accounts, he was born about 1800 somewhere in the United States (maybe New York?) and married his wife Elizabeth (unknown maiden name) in 1823. They settled in Peel Township, Wellington County, (Ontario) Canada West, and were present from the first Census in 1851.

I have attached what sources are readily available to the profile. Here are my questions:

1. In the 1851 Census, the surname is spelled Hawl. Is this an error on the part of the enumerator or did they change their surname to Hall permanently from something else?

2. In the 1851 Census, their religion is listed as Society of Friends, which I believe means they were Quakers? Does anyone know where we could source or verify this information?

3. In the 1861 Census, their religion was given as W.M., which to me is Wesleyan Methodist. Is this a correct assumption or is there something I am missing?

4. Also in the 1861 Census, William's son George's household is enumerated directly after William's. George has in his household a girl of 17 years, listed as coloured.  Is there any (remote) possibility that George and his family were involved in assisting with the Underground Railroad? With consideration to the fact they might have been Quakers? Is there any other reason for this girl to be there? It is only my experience but I think this might be the first time I have ever seen a non-white person in the 1861 Census in what I would consider some pretty rural country. But I don't poke around Wellington County a lot, either.

Okay thanks everyone!! I appreciate you reading the attached profile and lending any insight or suggestions!

Comments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Friends_(Upper_Canada) may give you some references on the movement from NYS and PA to Ontario.  In my family, I think some visited Ontario for a time but didn't remain.   

Few of my Quaker ancestors are known to have participated in UGRR.   Articles from the Swarthmore site refer to fugitives taking employment with Quakers (who may not have been active in UGRR, as the latter had to avoid calling attention).  Someone might correct me, but it may be that only from 1850 to 1865 were slave catchers operating legally in PA and NY, yet even then a few southerners took the risk of remaining there, and of course many sought employment in Canada.

HALL is reputedly commonly a Quaker surname.  My HALLs who moved from CT to PA and those who passed by Halltown (now WVa) clearly belong to that category, earlier NH HALLs likely but I don't see sources.  As I have 29 known American HALL ancestors from a dozen families, I haven't investigated with any degree of diligence.

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Many of the monthly meeting records from the New York yearly meeting are in the possession of Swarthmore College.  Many have been indexed.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/friends/hazard/index.html

Answer 1

Ancestry has a database of Canadian meeting records. If they belonged to a meeting there should be some record.

Ancestry can be searched without a subscription at many public libraries and at any LDS Family History Center.

Comments

I did look at that but I didn't find any Hall's, only Hill's?

Answer 2

It may well be that they were Quakers in the US, but no meeting present where they settled and, therefore, no meeting minutes.

Tracking down records when you aren't sure of any name is difficult.  Enumerators wrote what they heard.  So the name could be Hall, Hawl, Howell, Howe, Haul, etc.  Add the fact that they had an accent and . . .

Regarding the "colored" girl . . . anything is a guess.  They could have participated in the underground railroad if near the U.S/Canadian border.  Or they could have left the US because of a mixed marriage, child out-of-wedlock, etc.  

A good deal is known about the underground railroad.  Perhaps researching that angle would yield some results. . . .or at least be interesting.

Comments

Another thought:  You know the children.  Carefully review all the birth, marriage and death records for each. They may offer a mother's maiden name or where one of their parents were born.

Even Hall's grandchildren's records might help, if one of the children was born in US.

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I'm going to work on the children next, but so far their records are sparse to impossible to find!

Answer 3

Regarding question number 4, Peel Township in Wellington County had black settlers dating back to the 1840s. See Queen's Bush Settlement.

Answer 4

I agree with Kathy, that further researching the children would be a good idea.  

As for the 17-year-old colored girl, I see that her name is listed so you can try and research her too.  I also see that her religion is different than the rest of the household's.

Reasons she could be in the household include being an orphaned neighbor taken in by the family, or a hired servant.  Probably many more I haven't thought of.

Oh, and by the way, you might check what the definition of "colored" was for census purposes.  I see that the column heading also includes Indians.

Comments

In the 1861 Census of Canada West (Ontario), line 13 gave the census taker the option of "Colored persons, mulatto or Indian." In Ontario, "colored" usually meant "black."

Answer 5

Considering the secrecy maintained for anyone in the UGRR, even when in the 'north', I doubt that someone who was in the UGRR would have been mentioned let alone intentionally listed in the census.

For a first-hand account of how the UGRR operated and the level of secrecy that had to be maintained, I always suggest the book "Reminiscences of Levi Coffin" by Levi Coffin "president of the underground railroad." First edition 1876, available online for free (linked from his profile) and in numerous reprints. He discusses various UGRR operations in which he was directly involved as well as many individuals transported and those who helped transport.