CATHY NICOLL, "BIRCHTOWN RECOGNIZED: FIRST BLACK LOYALIST SETTLEMENT TO BECOME HISTORIC SITE," HALIFAX DAILY NEWS (JANUARY 29, 2000).

 Copyright Halifax Daily News 2000

It's been a long time coming, but North America's first Black Loyalist settlement is becoming a heritage tourism site.

Birchtown, Shelburne Co., was settled by Black Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, and by 1785 it had become the largest community of free blacks in North America.

Yesterday, the provincial and federal governments announced they would kick in $212,000 to help make Birchtown an official historic site. The Black Loyalist Heritage Society, a volunteer organization, will research, interpret, preserve and promote Black Loyalist history.

The province is kicking in $75,000 toward the project -- $50,000 from Economic Development and $25,000 from Community Services -- while Ottawa is contributing $137,000.

Teena Paynter, society registrar, said the society intends to use the money to renovate two historic buildings -- St. Paul's Anglican Church built in 1888, and a one-room school house built in 1835 -- to house the exhibits, conduct workshops for students on Black Loyalist history and provide space for concerts and guest speakers.

"It's significant to Nova Scotia, simply because it's another aspect of history and of shared history that is being displayed for everyone to see and to learn about," she said.

"It's about a group of people who arrived here 200 years ago -- 1,500 in Birchtown specifically -- that contributed to Nova Scotia society and Nova Scotia life and that we forget about, or that isn't displayed, very often."

Lawrence Bruce, vice president of the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, was happy with the announcement.

"It's beautiful, really. It's a lot of money but it's only a step toward what we're going after," he said.

The society eventually wants to include the old burial ground in the project, and build a new complex that would include a theatre, botanical gardens and restaurant.

Dr. John Reid, history professor and co-ordinator of Atlantic Canada Studies at Saint Mary's University, said Birchtown is of "enormous significance" in the history of Nova Scotia, the Loyalist migration and of British North America.

"I would say attention was overdue, but it represents a widening of the scope of our concept of Maritime history, and a widening the scope of it to embrace a wider range of experiences both in terms of ethnicity and social class," he said.

Reid said that it's only been over the past 25 years that both historians and African-Nova Scotians have been paying more attention to the importance of that component of the province's history, and this is "a natural outgrowth" from that attention.

The funding will also allow the society to launch the first Black Loyalist registry, a directory of people descending from the original 3,500 Black Loyalist settlers to the area.