Chloe Cooley

Chloe Cooley was an enslaved Black woman living in Queenston, Upper Canada, in 1793. Almost nothing is known of her life beyond a single, terrible incident, and the dates and places of her birth and death are unknown. She was one of the hundreds of Black people held in bondage in Upper Canada at the time, and under British property law she and others like her were treated as the property of the settlers who held them.

Sometime before March 1793, Sergeant Adam Vrooman, a Loyalist living in Queenston, bought Cooley from Benjamin Hardison, a farmer and merchant in Bertie Township. With rumours of abolition circulating, Vrooman decided to sell her across the border. Cooley resisted, according to later accounts by refusing to work and leaving the property without permission.

On 14 March 1793 Vrooman and his men seized her, bound her with a rope, threw her into a boat and took her across the Niagara River to be sold in the United States. Her screams and violent resistance were seen by neighbours. Peter Martin, a free Black man and former soldier in Butler's Rangers, and a white neighbour, William Grisley, reported what they had seen to the Executive Council of Upper Canada on 21 March.

Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, who was already known as an opponent of slavery, used the Cooley incident as the impetus for a law. Charges against Vrooman were dropped, but on 9 July 1793 the legislature passed the Act to Prevent the Further Introduction of Slaves and to Limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude, known as the Act to Limit Slavery. It was the first legislation in the British Empire to limit slavery.

The Act was a compromise. It did not free anyone who was already enslaved, and slavery was not abolished in Canada until 1834. But it stopped further slaves from being brought into the province and helped make Upper Canada a place of refuge. Cooley's story has been told in a Heritage Minute, and in 2022 the Government of Canada named her a National Historic Person.