Richard Pierpoint

Richard Pierpoint was born around 1744 in Bundu, in West Africa in what is now Senegal. At about the age of 16 he was captured, shipped across the Atlantic in a slave ship and sold into slavery in the Thirteen Colonies around 1760, to a British officer. He spent roughly two decades enslaved.

During the American Revolution Pierpoint joined the British side, and by 1780 he was one of about a dozen Black men serving with Butler's Rangers, a Loyalist regiment stationed at Niagara. Historians generally agree he most likely won his freedom through this service. Although few Black men served in northern British provincial corps at that time, Pierpoint was a pioneer in doing so.

When the Rangers disbanded in 1784 he settled in the Niagara area of Upper Canada, among a community of free Black people who tried to secure land of their own. Through the decades he worked as a labourer and farmer, and he was known in the community, which called him Captain Dick, as a respected leader, a gifted storyteller and an advocate for Black settlers.

In 1812, with war looming between Britain and the United States, the 60-something Pierpoint proposed that a Corps of Men of Colour be raised on the Niagara frontier. His offer was at first turned down, but a small Black unit was formed under Captain Robert Runchey in the autumn of 1812. Known as Captain Runchey's Company of Coloured Men, it served in several of the war's best-known actions, and Pierpoint volunteered as a private.

In July 1821 Pierpoint, by then living in Niagara, petitioned the lieutenant governor for help, saying he was a native of Bondu in Africa and wished to return to his homeland. The request was denied, and he and other veterans of the Coloured Corps were given land grants near present-day Fergus. He died around 1838. Today he is remembered on historical markers, in a Heritage Minute film, and as one of the founding figures of Black Canadian history.