Richard Pierpoint

Richard Pierpoint ( – ) was a Bundu-born farmer and soldier. Brought as a slave to British North America via the Atlantic slave trade, he fought as a Black Loyalist in the American Revolutionary War. After the war, he settled in a Black community in Upper Canada, where he was given some land. He also participated in the War of 1812. Pierpoint was regarded within the Black community of Upper Canada as a griot, a traditional West African storyteller and oral historian.

Butler's Rangers

Richard Pierpoint was born about 1744 in Bundu in what is now Senegal. When he was about sixteen, he was captured and sold into slavery. Surviving the Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean, Pierpoint was sold to a military officer in British North America named Pierpoint, probably in one of the New England Colonies. Richard Pierpoint acted as his personal servant. Conversely, his participation in the Petition of Free Negroes and subsequent sale or abandonment of his grant suggests he may have been single, at least by 1794.

The Petition of Richard Pierpoint, now of the Town of Niagara, a Man of Colour, a native of Africa, and an inhabitant of this Province since the year 1780.

Most humbly showeth,

That Your Excellency's Petitioner is a native of Bondu in Africa; that at the age of Sixteen Years he was made a Prisoner and sold as a Slave; that he was conveyed [transported] to America about the year 1760, and sold to a British officer; that he served his Majesty King George III during the American Revolutionary War in the Corps called Butler's Rangers; and again during the late American War in a Corps of Colour raised on the Niagara Frontier.

That Your Excellency's Petitioner is now old and without property; that he finds it difficult to obtain a livelihood by his labour; that he is above all things desirous to return to his native Country; that His Majesty's Government be graciously pleased to grant him any relief, he wishes it may be by affording him the means to proceed to England and from thence to a Settlement near the Gambia or Senegal Rivers, from whence he could return to Bondu ...

York Upper Canada 21st July 1821

His request was denied, and instead, Pierpoint and several other Coloured Corps veterans were given land grants in Garafraxa, just outside present-day Fergus.

Grant to Richard Pierpoint of the Township of Grantham in the County of Lincoln in the Niagara District, farmer -- as a private in the Coloured Corps under Captain Runchey and Lieutenant Robertson -- the easterly half of Lot No. 6 in the 1st Concession of the Township of Garafraxa -- containing one hundred acres. It is not known where he was buried. His will left the Garafraxa property to Lemuel Brown. Brown, who lived in the Guelph area at the time of Pierpoint's death, sold the land to the neighboring farmer.