acres out
of his plot cleared, fenced and under cultivation. On six acres more
the trees were felled. He had paid four installments on his farm,
owned a yoke of oxen, a wagon and a mare and two colts. His
fourteen-year-old boy was at school and was reading Virgil. In the
home, besides bed and bedding, chairs and tables, there was a rocking
chair and a large, new safe. Water was brought to the visitor in a
clean tumbler, set upon a plate. A neighboring cabin had carpet on the
floor and some crude prints on the walls. All the cabins had large
brick fireplaces. Rev. Mr. King's own house, built of logs with high
steep roof, dormer windows and a porch the whole length, was somewhat
larger than the others.[512]

What these people actually accomplished at Buxton amid conditions so
different from what they had known in the past is altogether
remarkable. Some had known little of farm work before coming to the
colony while all of them must have found the Canadian climate
something of a hardship even in the summer. Outside of the farm work
they showed ability as mechanics and tradesmen. One who visited them
in the fifties says:[513]

"The best country tavern in Kent is kept by Mr. West, at Buxton.
Mr. T. Stringer is one of the most enterprising tradesmen in the
county, and he is a Buxtonian, a colored man. I broke my carriage
near there. The woodwork, as well as the iron, was broken. I
never had better repairing done to either the woodwork or the
ironwork of my carriage, I never had better shoeing than was done
to my horses, in Buxton, in Feb., 1852, by a black man, a native
of Kentucky--in a word, the work was done after the pattern of
Charles Peyton Lucas. They are blessed with able mechanics, good
farmers, enterprising men, and women worthy of them and they are
training the rising generation to principles such as will give
them the best places in the esteem and the service of their
countrymen at some day not far distant."

A few years sufficed to remove most of the prejudice that had shown
itself in the opposition of the Larwill faction at Chatham at the
inception of the colony. When Rev. S. R. Ward visited the colony in
the early fifties he found that instead of lowering land values of
adjoining property as some had predicted would result from
establishing a Negro colony in Kent county, the Buxton settlement had
actually raised the value of adjoining farms. T