PAM STUART AND GLEN ALLEN, "THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF ST. ANDREWS' BLACKS," OTTAWA CITIZEN  (MAY 26, 1998).

Copyright Southam Publications Inc. 1998

ST. ANDREWS, N.B. - Golfers teeing off on the second hole of the vaunted course operated by the Algonquin Hotel here may be treading on the bones of blacks who settled in St. Andrews up to 150 years ago.

That startling morsel of information is contained in the oral histories of at least three aging residents of this Charlotte County seaside community.

One is George Goodeill, an octogenarian who settled in St. Andrews in 1929.

He says, "I recall years ago being told that the blacks lived in a shantytown on public land," he says. "It was just outside of town, where the golf course is now. They had a whole little community there, right where the second hole is now."

His words bring something else into sharp focus. To many older St. Andrews residents, a bend in the highway next to that area has traditionally been known as "Nigger's Corner," a name as ugly on paper as it is on the lips. (As social attitudes changed in more recent years, one "g" was dropped from the name and the pronunciation was changed to "Nijer.")

"I never saw the shantytown," Mr. Goodeill says. "The golf course has been there since I've been in St. Andrews, but the place where they buried their dead was pointed out to me years ago. It's about a hundred yards down from the second tee."

The Algonquin Hotel first opened on July 1, 1889. Five years later, a short nine-hole golf course was constructed at the other end of that tract of public land. The Algonquin was sold to CPR in 1902, and about this time the public land was also turned over to the company to develop. The golf course was expanded to include the land where the black population appears to have settled.

All traces of a shantytown or graveyard were obliterated, according to Mr. Goodeill and others.

Algonquin Hotel manager Andrew Turnbull has been with CPR since 1982, and with the Algonquin since 1993. He thought he had already heard everything there was to hear about the hotel and golf course. He says news that there may have been burials of blacks on the course is "fascinating. It is possible, sure, it's possible. This town is so full of history."

Mr. Turnbull says this latest research has been forwarded to an environmental team working on renovating the course. He says if it can be determined that blacks were buried in land that is now the golf course, "it's important to commemorate it in some way."

He also says, "If there was a shantytown on the golf course at one time, then that location makes sense. There's a brook on the second hole, and they would have wanted to be near a source of water.

"The area around the second hole isn't scheduled for (renovations) until the spring of 1999. We have 12 months to decide how to handle that area and whether it should be left alone."

Henry Bishop of the Black Cultural Centre in Cole Harbour, N.S., says that what may have happened to the black population of St. Andrews is typical of what happened everywhere in North America.

"It was common practice to dispose of bodies in the most convenient way, which usually meant on public land," he says. "Funerals would have been attended by only family and a few friends, and of course there wouldn't have been a stone or monument, just a wooden marker on the grave."

In fact, while it is true that the Loyalists can be traced through church records, surviving written documents and through their graves, their black slaves and servants cannot. A search for the graves of St. Andrews' black pioneers leads to the disturbing discovery that their bodies were not interred in proper graveyards.

In the 18th and 19th centuries it was common practice all over North America for the bodies of black people to be disposed of as cheaply and easily as possible, which usually meant they were buried on public land. When that land was needed for development, it was also common practice to use it without regard for the burial sites it contained.

The suggestion that blacks lived in a shantytown on what is now this community's golf course -- and were buried there when their lives came to an end -- throws into the light of day the often- mysterious matter of black history in St. Andrews itself.

St. Andrews is predominantly white. Except for the summer months, when tourists flood into town, very few non-white faces are seen on the streets. When asked about people of African descent, many senior citizens immediately begin to talk about Caddie Norris, a black man who left an indelible mark on St. Andrews in the first half of this century.

Mr. Norris, the son of a chef at the old Kennedy Hotel, was born with a harelip and cleft palate, both of which were repaired on the kitchen table of the hotel by two visiting doctors who had noticed the boy's condition and volunteered their services. As an adult working as a stable hand, Mr. Norris endeared himself to hundreds of local children by giving them daily rides on his horse-drawn carriage. He played drums in a local band, looked after his blind sister all her life, and for more than 20 years pumped the bellows for the organ in the Anglican Church. When he died in 1948, his funeral was one of the biggest in the town's history.

The only other black person who still lingers in some memories is "Black Violet," who was employed as a cook by a local family, and who lived well into her 90s. She, too, loved children and earned their friendship by treating them to cookies while she told them stories about her early life as a slave.

Based on the current number of black residents and the small amount of information available about former black residents, one would think St. Andrews never had a significant black population. That is not correct.

The 1851 census is by no means a complete or accurate record of the times, but it does yield the names of about 50 blacks living in St. Andrews.

There may well have been more. Although the largest single influx arrived with the Loyalists after the start of the American Revolutionary War, blacks were in New Brunswick much earlier. They came from the United States and the West Indies, and many came as free men.

In his book The Blacks in New Brunswick (1972), W.A. Spray of Fredericton's St. Thomas University says that the first black man arrived here in the last decade of the 17th century. He had been captured by the French during a raid on New England and was brought, a prisoner, to New Brunswick. He eventually returned to Boston.

The exact number of blacks who were brought to New Brunswick by the Loyalists between 1783 and 1784 will probably never be known, but government reports of the time place the number between 1,200 and 1,500. They landed in every county and most towns, including St. Andrews. Some were slaves and others indentured servants, although the lines between the two classes were so close as to be virtually indistinguishable.

Whether he was master or employer, the white man held enormous power over the black. Though slave owners were prohibited by law from beating or killing slaves, it was widely accepted that no white man in New Brunswick would ever be convicted for such an act, and none ever was.

Even those blacks who arrived here as free men often didn't remain that way. Without money or chattels, denied the right to work in many professions, and lacking the necessary experience and skill to clear land and build homes, some could survive only by selling themselves into indentured servitude. It was often a one-way ticket back to slavery.

Slavery did exist in St. Andrews. George Goodeill still has a razor-sharp memory and a life-long interest in local history. He recalls when an old house near the foot of King Street was torn down.

"In the basement they found leg irons and chains," he says. "That's where they used to chain up the slaves at night to keep them from running away."

He also recalls hearing a story about a slave known as "Black Dick" who was lynched in front of the town offices, accused of impregnating his sister, Mariah.

Sometime between 1783, when the Loyalists brought their black slaves and servants here, and 1948, when Caddie Norris died, the black population of St. Andrews disappeared. In fact, little remains today to show that they were ever here. Parish and church records contain little or no information about the births, marriages and deaths of blacks.

Afraid that being enumerated by the government might subject them to new taxes, many residents would have worked hard to avoid being included in the census figures. It is therefore virtually certain that more than 50 blacks were living here in 1851. Tracing even those few people who were included in this limited data base would be a long and arduous task, but one thing can be quickly checked -- and it reveals a troubling fact.

None of the black people listed on the 1851 census were buried in a St. Andrews graveyard. Some, if not all, of them must have died while still living in St. Andrews. Prior to 1851, many other blacks must have died in St. Andrews, too. Yet none of them was interred in a St. Andrews graveyard. Where are their bodies?

Caddie Norris was the last link in a chain of black residents which stretched back 150 years, and he is the only one who has not been forgotten.

At his funeral in 1948, he was acknowledged as a valuable human being who had made a contribution to the town. After his death a plaque was hung in the Anglican Church. It read "To the Glory of God and in Honoured memory of Cadman Norris, a coloured gentleman who the children loved and who won the respect of all who knew him."

He was also given something else his predecessors had been denied -- a grave of his own in a proper cemetery.