Book of Negroes

The Book of Negroes is a document created by Brigadier General Samuel Birch, under the direction of Sir Guy Carleton, that records names and descriptions of 3,000 Black Loyalists, enslaved Africans who escaped to the British lines during the American Revolution and were evacuated to points in Nova Scotia as free people of colour.

The first African person in Nova Scotia arrived with the founding of Port Royal in 1605. African people were then brought as slaves to Nova Scotia during the founding of Louisbourg and Halifax. The first major migration of African people to Nova Scotia happened during the American Revolution. Enslaved Africans in America who escaped to the British during the American Revolutionary War became the first settlement of Black Nova Scotians and Black Canadians. Other Black Loyalists were transported to settlements in several islands in the West Indies and some to London. Recorded in 1783, this 150-page document is the only one to have recorded Black Canadians in a large, detailed scope of work.

The document contains records on 3000 Africans; the former slaves recorded in the Book of Negroes were evacuated to British North America, where they were settled in the newly established Birchtown and other places in the colony. According to the Treaty of Paris (1783), the United States argued for the return of all property, including slaves. The British refused to return the slaves, to whom they had promised freedom during the war for joining their cause. The detailed records were created to document the freed people whom the British resettled in Nova Scotia, along with other Loyalists. The book was assembled by Samuel Birch, the namesake of Birchtown, Nova Scotia, under the direction of Sir Guy Carleton.

Some freedmen later migrated from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone, where they formed the original settlers of Freetown, under the auspices of the Sierra Leone Company. They are among the ancestors of the Sierra Leone Creole ethnic group.

Notable people recorded in the Book of Negroes include Boston King, Harry Washington, Moses Wilkinson and Cato Perkins.

As the Book of Negroes was recorded separately by American and British officers, there are two versions of the document. The British version is held in The National Archives in Kew, London. The American version is held by the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. It was published under the title The Black Loyalist Directory: African Americans in Exile After the American Revolution (1996), edited by Graham Russell Hodges, Susan Hawkes Cook, and Alan Edward Brown.

The Canadian novelist Lawrence Hill wrote The Book of Negroes (2007, published in the United States as Someone Knows My Name). It is inspired by the 3,000 former Black African Slaves from America, many of whom were owned by White slave owners. The Former Black African slaves were given free land and housing by the British, in a Nova Scotia town called Birchtown, named after the original author of "The Book of Negros" British Brigadier General Samuel Birch.

In 1792 1,200 residents of Birchtown chose to emigrate to another British Colony called Sierra Leone, which was founded by a British Lieutenant John Clarkson for freedmen in South Africa.