ately, too, these people settled in the same section.
The colored settlements at Dawn, Colchester, Elgin, Dresden, Windsor,
Sandwich, Queens, Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton, St. Catherines,
Chatham, Riley, Anderton, Maiden, Gonfield, were all in Southern
Ontario. In the course of time the growth of these groups produced a
population sufficiently dense to facilitate cooeperation in matters
pertaining to social betterment. The uplift of the refugees was made
less difficult also by the self-denying white persons who were their
first teachers and missionaries. While the hardships incident to this
pioneer effort all but baffled the ardent apostle to the lowly, he
found among the Canadian whites so much more sympathy than among the
northerners that his work was more agreeable and more successful than
it would have been in the free States. Ignoring the request that the
refugees be turned from Canada as undesirables, the white people of
that country protected and assisted them.[3] Canadians later underwent
some change in their attitude toward their newcomers, but these
British-Americans never exhibited such militant opposition to the
Negroes as sometimes developed in the Northern States.[4]

[Footnote 1: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 222.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 247-250.]

[Footnote 3: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, pp. 201 and 233.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid._, 233.]

The educational privileges which the refugees hoped to enjoy in
Canada, however, were not easily exercised. Under the Canadian law
they could send their children to the common schools, or use their
proportionate share of the school funds in providing other educational
facilities.[1] But conditions there did not at first redound to the
education of the colored children.[2] Some were too destitute to
avail themselves of these opportunities; others, unaccustomed to this
equality of fortune, were timid about having their children mingle
with those of the whites, and not a few clad their youths so poorly
that they became too unhealthy to attend regularly[3]. Besides, race
prejudice was not long in making itself the most disturbing factor.
In 1852 Benjamin Drew found the minds of the people of Sandwich much
exercised over the question of admitting Negroes into the public
schools. The same feeling was then almost as strong in Chatham,
Hamilton, and London[4]. Consequently, "partly owing to this
prejudice, and partly to their own preference, the colored p