to teach or cause to be taught or instructed, the said Apprentice in the Trade and Mystery of a Menial’s servent or the usual occupations of an Husbandman as Common in Yarmouth —
And procure and provide him sufficient Meat, Drink, Apparel, Lodging, and washing, fitting for an Apprentice, during said Term of Four Years Seven Months and Nine days or till he is 22 years old which will be on the 2d Jany 1820, and at the Expiration of said apprenticeship shall give him One complete suit of Clothing over and above his every day Clothing
AND for the true Performance of and singular the Covenants and Agreements aforesaid, the said Parties do bind themselves each unto the other firmly by these Presents. In Witness whereof the said parties have interchangeably set their hands and seals here unto. Dated the Eighteenth Day of May in the Fifty fifth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Third by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, &c. Annoque Domini, One Thousand Eight
Hundred and Fifteen, /s/
Signed sealed and delivered, David [his X] Dize
in the Presence of
Benjm Bingay
Samuel C. Porter
Nehemiah Porter
Above registered by Benjamin Barnard, Notary Public
on 18 May 18153
Now, David Dize was not a formally educated man. He was, however, clever enough to know how to survive. This man not only lived on for many years but became the strength and inspiration of the people who followed him and settled in the community of Greenville. Many of his followers had come with the Black Loyalists who settled in Shelburne and eventually made their way to Yarmouth County. They came to settle in a place that appeared to them to be a safe haven.
So it was that David Dize had become one of the spiritual leaders in this community of Greenville. “Reverend” Dize went on to serve his church and community faithfully for many years. During that time he and his wife took several children into their nurturing care, but when David passed away at the age of ninety-three in 1891, he was a resident of Yarmouth’s Poor Farm.4 It is possible that he is buried in Riverview Cemetery (established for the Poor Farm), but there is no record available. Although various other sources have his age at time of death as 106,5 the indenture he signed with Nehemiah Porter in 1815 states that David would be twenty-two years old on January 2, 1820, making his year of birth 1798, and his age at death as ninety-three.
Indenture of David Dize. This very old document outlines the conditions that David Dize had to follow after his indenture to Nehemiah Porter. Those conditions were very restricting to say the least, but knowing that he would be a free man at the end of his servitude, he obeyed them all.
Deacon David Dize, circa August 1, 1890. The foundation for David’s homestead is still visible. When the deputy warden for the Municipality of Yarmouth, Walter Churchill, was dictating notes about some of the residents in the municipality, one of the stories was that David Dize buried his wife halfway between the back of his house and Churchill’s Lake. It is not known which wife as David was married twice. In searching for this grave, I have found a location that could be one, but there is another location that also has been suggested as the site. The search continues.
One can only imagine the high hopes these people shared for a future in their beautiful country landscape as they began to rebuild their lives away from their former existence. As far as can be determined, Greenville was the first and only true home of many early Blacks.
SOLITUDE, HOPES, LOST DREAMS, POVERTY
Is that not what settling in a new place was all about? For some, yes, but for Blacks, it was most definitely! As it happened, these newcomers were not aware of what they would have to face resettling on foreign land. But most of them, like David Dize, were freed from their bondage to live where and how they chose, regardless of the hardships they were bound to face. If they could survive slavery they could survive anything, for being free was all that mattered to them now.
They had lost loved ones through that slavery, yes, but now that they were free they worked side by side to help one another rebuild their broken lives. They worked harder than ever, year after year, diligently tilling the soil with inadequate tools. They planted vegetables, hoping that this year the crop would sustain them through another cold winter. Men and women would have hunted side by side for the sustaining protein that the wild meat provided.
Unfortunately, things did not always go as planned. Babies were stillborn because mothers had to labour at men’s work for long, seemingly unending hours in order to survive. And what of the babies that did make it to full term, only to have their eyes closed forever because of poor crops or scarcity of game? Rickets, malnutrition, and diseases, for which they had no immunity and hence no cure, ran rampant among them.
DEATH
Death stalked them at every turn with little help from the outside communities. Nevertheless, belief in their God was what sustained them through the hell that was their lives. Their hopes, their dreams, their prayers, it seemed, were all they had to cling to. And yet, sometimes even prayers were not enough. Did some of them pray for that dark abyss called death when their new life became unbearable? What became of those who did pass into the next world?
GONE AND SADLY FORGOTTEN
When was the first soul laid to rest beneath the cold, hard ground next to the small, but effective church they had established in the community of Greenville? There are no records to tell us. What family mourned a loved one, only too soon to forget, with no permanent marker laid to identify this soul? The pattern continued for nearly a century. Bury the dead; forget the dead. From the 1850s to the early 1960s at least one hundred infants, toddlers, teenagers, and adults that have been identified were laid to rest in the Greenville Church Cemetery. There was never a cross, a headstone, or foot stone to say, “Oh, yes, Mrs. Falls is buried there. I know her grandchildren.”
Indeed, so closely were the caskets crammed together that when the last bodies were interred, gravediggers had to dig in several places until they found an empty lot in which to lay a soul at rest. As they dug grave after grave, time and time again their shovels would scrape one of the many caskets that were already buried there. Whose casket received the “tap, tap, tap” of the diggers’ shovels as they tried to find space for a new coffin? Did this lost soul’s spirit say “Enough is enough?” Or did it heave a sigh of resignation, knowing that one more was coming home to rest? Even today, parishioners of that tiny church, the Greenville United Baptist Church, park their vehicles on hallowed ground under which is the final resting home of many, a truth that is generally known.
The Greenville Church Cemetery was not the only place in this tiny community to succumb to overcrowding. The African Bethel Cemetery occupies the space on which once stood the African Bethel Church. There, too, may be more than one hundred Blacks, many of whose names are lost to history. Although it is called the African Bethel Cemetery, there are White families buried there, as well.
Unlike the Greenville Church Cemetery, the African Bethel Cemetery had a few stone monuments marking the graves showing us that someone cared enough to tell their loved ones, “You will not be forgotten.” Obviously, poverty played an enormous role in determining whether a family could put a monument on a loved one’s grave. Should
