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May 6, 2021 · Last Edited February 28, 2023. Thornton and Lucie (Ruthie) Blackburn, freedom seekers, entrepreneurs, anti-slavery activists and community benefactors (Thornton, born c. 1812 in Maysville, Kentucky; died in 1890 in Toronto, ON. Lucie, born c. 1803, possibly in the West Indies; died in 1895 in Toronto). After a dramatic flight from Kentucky ...
Lucie Blackburn. Born. 1803. Died. 1895. Toronto, Canada. Lucie "Ruthie" Blackburn (1803–1895) was a self-emancipated West-Indian, American former slave who escaped to Canada with her husband Thornton Blackburn and helped him establish the first taxi company in Toronto. [1][2]
Thornton and Lucie escaped from Louisville to Michigan in 1831. They had been living there for two years when, in 1833, Kentucky slave hunters located, re-captured, and arrested the couple. [2] The Blackburns were jailed but were allowed visitors, which provided the opportunity for Lucie to exchange her clothes and her incarceration with Mrs. George French. [4]
Thornton Blackburn was born into enslavement in Kentucky. Separated from his mother at a young age, Blackburn was forced to work as a child, including driving carriages and working as a porter. As a teenager, Thornton met “Ruthie” (later known as Lucie), an enslaved, Caribbean-born woman who was working as a nursemaid.
majority of enslaved African Americans in the antebellum era, Thornton and Ruthie (later Lucie) Blackburn were illiterate. They remained so all of their lives, even after their escape to Canada; thus they left few written records. However, their remarkable story was unearthed in a schoolyard in 1985 when a team of
Dec 30, 2011 · Thornton rode up top. The carriage was painted in the Blackburn cab company’s own colours of red and yellow. “The Toronto Transit Company,’ Frost notes, “uses the Blackburn logo colors of red and yellow for its streetcars and buses to this day” (p. 268). The year 1793 is also the first year that the U.S. made its own coins.
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Nov 11, 2016 · In 1834, as Canadian enslavement of black people ended through the enactment of the British Imperial Act, a couple with Kentucky roots made their way to Toronto. The couple, Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, might have been less remarkable save for a few very significant aspects of their lives. Despite managing to escape the still legal bondage in ...
