Black Loyalist Heritage Society — Attraction in Birchtown

Outstanding museum with historical buildings and trails that tells a fulsome narrative of the Black Loyalist experience, difficulties upon settlement & tenacity to persevere by working the hardscrabble land & creating other African Nova Scotian communities throughout the colony/province most of which exist to the present day. A number of Birchtown’s Free Blacks went on to settle Freetown, Sierra Leone in West Africa.

I highly recommend that visitors read Lawrence Hill’s award-winning novel The Book of Negroes (2007) or watch the 2015 television miniseries by the same name. The title of the novel was changed for American, Australian & New Zealand audiences to Someone Knows My Name to respect sensitivities related to the term.

Note that the title derives from a historical document of the same name kept by British naval officers at the tail end of the American Revolutionary War. It documents the 3,000 blacks who had served the King in the war and were fleeing Manhattan for Canada in 1783. Unless you were in The Book of Negroes, you couldn't...

I'm unsure of where I can begin. If you are going to Nova Scotia you MUST visit Shelbourne and make the drive to the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, it is full of information and history that will make you uncomfortable and is missed in our school textbooks. However needed to fully understand the history and be able to educate younger generations. The artifacts and flow of the museum is amazing. Hailey who was our introduction person was amazing and explained everything we needed to know in depth, she took us to the school house and showed us to the Pit house. While directing us to the church house, we had the pleasure of meeting the Executive Director Andrea who was an absolute pleasure to meet. You can tell by the passion in Andrea's eyes and knowledgeable conversation she is right where she belongs. She has some big plans for the Black Loyalist Heritage Society and was so informative. 10/10 I recommend this as a place to put on your list of...

$9.20 for entry. A few minutes after arriving we were given an overview of the museum by one of the docents who also gave us a name of one of the original black loyalists. You could look up this person's name at one of the posts to find out what happened to them from slavery to the settlement of Sierra Leone. My person chose to stay in Nova Scotia and has many present day descendents in the province. Many interactive screens told of the hardships slaves faced from capture in Africa, the middle journey across the Atlantic Ocean to both north and south America, the life of slavery and the journey to apparent freedom in British colonies only to be met with persecution because of their skin colour and denial of equality. We walked to the burial ground and to the Anglican church on...