ACHH2: Pioneer Slave Cemetery (Lower Montague) Traditional Cache
Hidden : 1/25/2024
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:


Welcome to Atlantic Canada’s Hidden Histories (ACHH) Geotour!

  You’ve located another stop in this set of geocaches that are part of the GeoTour (click).

  This is one of the first ACHH2 caches to be published in Prince Edward Island & is being published in celebration of Black History Month 2024.

About this Location

This ACHH2 stop brings you to Wightman’s (aka St. Andrew’s) Point Pioneer Cemetery (1799) in Lower Montague, a small treed area near the shore. Please enter and exit using the gate in the NE corner of the park. This site was recognized as one of Canada’s National Historic Places in 2009.

While slavery was prevalent in the Southern US — the Civil War was fought over the economics of slavery and political control of that system (states’ rights) — it also existed on Prince Edward Island.

There are only five remaining headstones in this cemetery: John Aitken (1729-1799), Neil MacKinnon (1829-1858), John Wightman & wife Margaret Ray Armstrong Wightman, and James Wightman (1840-1863).

The site also contains many graves marked with simple sandstones [insert photo of marker here]. Some of these may have once had inscriptions, but these have weathered away. One such stone is believed to be associated with Dembo Sickles (aka Suckles), a Black Island slave.

Unmarked Black Grave

Dembo Sickles (c. 1762-1845) was born in Africa and forcibly taken as a slave to New England where he was purchased and owned by Captain William Creed (c. 1739-1809). Creed and his associate, David Higgins (d. 1783), had come to the Island in the late 1760s from the New England colonies. They attempted to establish a fishing business in Three Rivers in Lot 59, but this was disrupted by the outbreak of the American Revolution. The Census of Rhode Island for 1782 is the first to mention Dembo Sickles in the Creed household. By 1793, Suckles was living in the Three Rivers area, since he is mentioned in the diary of the famous missionary, Dr. James MacGregor. MacGregor was not a supporter of slavery and he notes later that beginning in November 1795, Sickles (Suckles) entered into a contract of Indenture with Creed - whereby he would receive his freedom after "seven additional years of servitude."

When this time was up in 1802, Sickles married Mary Moore, a slave owned by then Governor Edmund Fanning. They had nine children, four sons and five daughters. The 1841 Census lists Suckles as residing in Lot 59 as a farmer.

In 1991, a memorial service was held at the site with representatives of the Creed, Sickles, Aitken, MacKinnon, and Wightman families. Today, this cemetery is owned by the Province of PEI.

References: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sickles-212 and Sharing Prince Edward Island's Black History by Sally Cole

Atlantic Canada’s Hidden Histories (ACHH) GeoTour is a collaborative project between the City of Fredericton, National Trust for Canada, the Capital Region Association of Geocachers, the Association of Nova Scotia Geocaching, and Prince Edward Island.. We acknowledge that caches of this tour are placed in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people. The territory of the Mi’kmaq people are recognized in the Peace and Friendship Treaties to establish an ongoing relationship of peace, friendship and mutual respect between equal nations.

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