It is said that the woods around Weymouth Falls whispered in the wind — not with secrets, but with stories. Stories of exiles, soldiers, mothers, and children whose feet first touched Nova Scotia’s soil not as conquerors but as survivors.

On March 10, 1818, a child named Joseph Cromwell was born into one of those stories. His parents, William and Harriet Cromwell, were part of the Black community rooted in the hills of Digby County — a place born of the promises made and broken to people who had once sought refuge under the British flag. Whether William and Harriet were descendants of Black Loyalists of the 1780s or Black Refugees who arrived after the War of 1812, what is certain is this: they were free — but not equal.

At the time of Joseph’s birth, Weymouth Falls was a tight-knit Black farming settlement, surrounded by towering pines and rocky soil that resisted the plow almost as fiercely as the wider society resisted their presence. The 1818 baptismal record lists Joseph as the son of William and Harriet Cromwell, both recorded under the racial classification of "Blacks" — a designation that, while factual, placed their family firmly on the margins of colonial society.

William, we can imagine, rose before the sun, his boots thick with the morning’s dew, cutting timber or tending what small garden the land allowed. Harriet, perhaps with infant Joseph swaddled to her back, stoked the hearth and stirred cornmeal into a thick porridge for breakfast. They had no wealth, but they had a name — Cromwell — and within that name, a quiet dignity passed down through generations.

The church was the center of their world. Methodism, with its promise of salvation and personal dignity, had swept through Nova Scotia’s Black communities in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Young Joseph would have grown up hearing the ring of hymns spilling from a simple chapel, or the deeper-toned prayers of elders who had seen war and exile in their youth. In these songs and sermons, he would have heard a theology of deliverance — not just from sin, but from history.

The children of Weymouth learned their lessons not from books but from seasons — when to sow, when to reap, how to mend, how to endure. Joseph’s early years likely mirrored those of his peers: gathering kindling from the woods, fishing in the Sissiboo River, helping his father with the livestock. Yet the land gave little, and the colonial government gave even less. Black families often received the worst plots, and even those they had to fight to keep. There were no courts that recognized them as equals, no schools that welcomed their sons, no institutions that reflected their worth.

Still, Joseph’s childhood was not devoid of hope. He had his mother’s wisdom, his father’s example, and the power of memory — the kind carried not in ink but in bone. It is possible that William and Harriet, or their parents before them, remembered the Carolina plantations or Virginia ports they once fled. If so, then every acre they tried to tame in Nova Scotia was an act of quiet defiance: “We are still here.”

And in that stubborn survival, Joseph found his start.

Chapter 2: Marriage and Faith – Building a Home with Cecilia Hatfield

He stood at the altar in his Sunday coat — stiff from washing and worn at the elbows — eyes steady, voice sure. Joseph Cromwell, now 23, had come to Baie Sainte-Marie not as a wanderer, but as a man ready to make a promise.

And standing across from him was Cecilia Hatfield.

We know little of Cecilia’s early life in the records, but what we do know speaks volumes: she was likely of mixed African and Acadian descent, baptized and raised in the unique cultural braid of Clare Township, where French, Mi’kmaq, and African lineages intertwined on the rugged shores of western Nova Scotia. Her name — Hatfield — evokes the colonial naming patterns of Black Loyalists or indentured servants who had once worked alongside Acadian neighbors. She may have spoken French at home, prayed in English, and known the songs of her grandmothers in both tongues.

The marriage was solemnized in 1841, likely in a small wooden chapel or Methodist meeting house where voices rose unaccompanied by organs, but thick with devotion. If the preacher read from the Book of Ruth — “Whither thou goest, I will go” — it would not have been just poetry, but prophecy. Cecilia was pledging her life not only to Joseph, but to the unbroken lineage of hardship and hope that both bore.

In time, children came: Marguerite Geneviève, George, James, William, and Mary Ann. Each one baptized in turn, their names inked in fragile script in church records now faded by time and salt air. The family lived, most likely, in a modest wood-frame home near the coast — close enough to hear the tides and the cries of gulls, far enough inland to till the land and tend small livestock.

Life was hard. Even for free families, the specter of marginalization loomed. Black and mixed-race residents were often denied access to public schools or political participation. In rural Digby County, Joseph and Cecilia would have relied on their church, their kin, and their own two hands. Joseph, as a farmer, would have coaxed potatoes and beans from thin earth, felled trees for firewood, and perhaps cut timber to trade. Cecilia managed the home — raising children, preparing meals, mending clothes, and reading the weather in the sky. Her days were long, but they were filled with purpose.

Their Methodist faith anchored them. Sundays were sacred. The family would wash, dress in their cleanest garments, and walk — perhaps for miles — to the nearest circuit-riding preacher’s service. There, among neighbors and cousins, they sang hymns like “Blessed Assurance” and “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” songs handed down from both the chapel and the camp meeting.

But life in Nova Scotia was changing. The population grew, land became scarcer, and opportunity for Black families remained slim. By the early 1850s, Joseph and Cecilia began to look west — toward Canada West, later called Ontario, where rumors whispered of better land and a freer life.

They would not be alone in this hope. Across Nova Scotia, Black families were packing up — leaving the coastlines where they'd been born to seek new beginnings in the forested interior of Canada’s burgeoning western townships. For Joseph and Cecilia, the move would be a leap of faith, not unlike the one they took when they first said “I do.”

They had already built a family and a legacy in Nova Scotia. But destiny — and history — would call them onward.

Chapter 3: Migration Inland – Ontario’s Promise and Peril

By 1852, Joseph Cromwell had already weathered a great deal: marriage, fatherhood, the scraping life of a Nova Scotia farmer. But there came a time — likely during a particularly lean winter or a failed harvest — when the decision became clear.

They would go west.

The promise of Canada West, later called Ontario, shimmered on the horizon like morning sun on a plowed field. Letters from earlier migrants spoke of better land, expanding townships, and even schools for Black children in certain areas. Joseph must have looked at his growing children — Marguerite, George, James, and Mary Ann — and wondered what future they’d have if they stayed on the stony shorelines of Digby County.

And so, they packed up what they could carry — cast iron pots, bedding, seed saved from the last harvest — and began the long journey overland. From Weymouth Falls to Halifax, perhaps by ox cart or coastal sloop. Then up through New Brunswick into Lower Canada, and eventually into the rich forests and farmland of Huron County. They may have traveled by rail in part, or by wagon roads that cut through the Ontario bush, stopping in villages with names still raw with newness: Clifford, Minto, Peel.

They arrived in Howick Township, part of Huron East, in the early 1850s — perhaps one of the few Black families in the area at the time. It is here that the records begin to reappear: Joseph Cromwell, farmer, age listed as 32 in the 1851 census, residing in Wellington County, Peel Township.

The soil was rich but unforgiving. Forests had to be cleared by hand, stumps dug out with sweat and horse muscle. Joseph likely worked as both a tenant farmer and a hired hand, renting plots from larger landowners while slowly building up the means to purchase. With his older sons reaching working age, the family unit became a labor force — planting, threshing, hauling lumber, and repairing fences between harvests.

In the evenings, the family gathered around a fire in their modest Ontario cabin — rough-hewn walls and a thatch or board roof, the floor perhaps packed earth at first, later replaced with wood. Cecilia would prepare cornbread or potatoes from the cellar, while Joseph told stories of Weymouth or read aloud from a tattered Methodist hymnal.

Despite the challenges, there were signs of growth. Marguerite, now a young woman, may have courted suitors from nearby townships. Mary Ann, the youngest of the first set of children, helped tend to animals and carried water from a nearby spring. Their community ties deepened — likely through a Methodist congregation or through Black-led schooling efforts that were springing up in the province by the 1860s.

But Ontario, like Nova Scotia before it, was not free from exclusion. Black settlers often faced social and economic barriers: landowners who refused to sell, schools that segregated students, and towns that would not welcome Black tradesmen. Joseph’s resilience was again tested, not through outright chains, but through quiet refusals and closed doors.

Still, he endured. And in doing so, he carved out a small place in the great sweep of Canadian settlement — a legacy not of land barony or fame, but of staying power.

Cecilia, ever his partner in labor and prayer, carried more than her share of hardship. And though the precise date is unclear, sometime in the early 1870s, tragedy struck: Cecilia passed away, leaving Joseph a widower.

The sorrow was surely deep. They had built a life from little more than faith and timber, and now he faced the land and the seasons alone — save for his children.

But Joseph Cromwell’s story, like so many Black stories of the 19th century, did not end in grief. Instead, it turned toward new beginnings.

Chapter 4: Loss and Renewal – The Second Family

In the quiet village of Clifford, nestled among the maples and the mist of Howick Township, Joseph Cromwell stood once again before a minister. But this time, he was older. His hair had begun to gray at the temples, and his hands bore the calluses of thirty years of toil. Still, his voice did not waver as he spoke the words.

“I do.”

The date was February 28, 1874, and the woman standing across from him was Susan Jane Miller, twenty-five years his junior. For Joseph — now fifty-six — it was not a second youth he was chasing, but a second chance.

Susan Jane was young, bright, and practical — perhaps the daughter of another farming family or the niece of a fellow churchgoer. She would have known Joseph as a man of dignity and responsibility. And he, in her, must have seen not just companionship but continuity — someone who could help him raise his children, keep his house warm, and plant the next season’s crop of potatoes and corn.

They were married in Clifford by a traveling clergyman. The Ontario marriage record, written in careful script, confirms the union. There is no mention of a lavish reception, no newspaper announcement, but one imagines the modest joy: a shared meal with neighbors, Susan in her best calico dress, Joseph pulling his youngest child — likely Mary Ann — close to his side.

Together, Joseph and Susan would bring eight children into the world. Their names are scattered through census records, marriage ledgers, and oral family trees: Charles, Emily, Laura, Japher (sometimes spelled Japhet or Jasper), Henry, and others. This second family grew up in the same Ontario soil Joseph had claimed decades before — a legacy literally multiplying.

Even as the world changed around them — railroads laying iron across the countryside, factories opening in nearby Guelph and Stratford — Joseph remained a man of the land. He plowed his fields behind a slow horse, built fences in the spring, harvested by hand in the fall. Susan managed the home, taught her children to sew and knead bread, and likely led the family in morning prayers.

Sunday remained sacred. The family attended Methodist services, likely in a wooden church lit by oil lamps and filled with the scent of pine pews and woolen coats. There, Joseph may have sat in the front row, stoic and upright, while Susan sang hymns in a steady alto. The children fidgeted, whispered, and sometimes were hushed with a stern look or a tap on the knee. These were not just religious rituals — they were a public affirmation that the Cromwells belonged.

Despite the challenges of raising a large family in rural 19th-century Ontario — harsh winters, disease, unpredictable crop yields — the Cromwells endured. Joseph was now known in Clifford and Howick not just as a settler, but as an elder. His name began appearing in community directories and agricultural census records. He may not have held public office, but he held something just as precious: respect.

As his older children from his first marriage moved into their own homes or migrated farther west, Joseph’s second family came of age. Charles J. Cromwell, one of his sons with Susan, would later move to Michigan — a story echoed across many Black Canadian families during the Great Migration era. Another son, Japher Cromwell, would settle in the U.S. as well, marrying in Michigan and starting a new life.

But Joseph stayed. He was Ontario soil-bound, the last leaf on a tree that had grown tall from rocky Nova Scotian roots.

His life in the 1870s and 1880s was one of rhythm, legacy, and quiet pride. He had built two families, survived two provinces, and passed on the only wealth he truly had: character, land, and faith.

Chapter 5: Legacy in Soil and Spirit – Joseph’s Final Years

The fields were quiet now. No more sound of the plowshare cutting through earth, no more barking dogs chasing squirrels at the fencerow, no more calloused hands lifting stones from the furrows.

In the winter of 1904, Joseph Cromwell — farmer, father, husband, settler — closed his eyes for the final time in Wellington County, Ontario. He was eighty-five years old.

His passing was marked not by fanfare, but by a death record, inked by hand, listing his name and date. There was no grand obituary in the local paper, but in the hearts of those who knew him — his children, neighbors, church elders — his death echoed like a hymn’s final verse.

By the time Joseph passed away, the world had changed beyond recognition. He had been born before Canada was a nation, before the abolition of slavery in the United States, before railroads stitched together provinces and states. He had seen the growth of Black communities in Nova Scotia and their slow, determined migration into Ontario. He had buried a wife, married again, and raised more than a dozen children between two unions.

And through all of it, he had endured.

His sons — like Japher and Charles J. Cromwell — would cross into Michigan, chasing better pay and stability in industrializing cities like Lansing and Detroit. In doing so, they planted the Cromwell name in new soil, carrying Joseph’s legacy across borders and generations.

His daughters would marry, bear children, and pass down stories of “Papa Joe,” who came from Weymouth Falls and never stopped working. Perhaps they told of how he used to pray before dawn or how he could mend a broken tool with little more than twine and patience.

Joseph was likely buried in a small cemetery in Howick Township or nearby Huron North, alongside other Black settlers whose lives were rarely recorded in stone but etched deep into the soil. A wooden cross may have marked his grave. Or perhaps his family scraped together enough for a modest headstone — just a name, two dates, and maybe a phrase:

“A faithful man. A good father. At rest.”

He left no wealth, but his children carried the inheritance of his integrity. They became carpenters, factory workers, homemakers, deacons, and storytellers. And they passed his blood and name through the 20th century and into the 21st — where his descendants now seek to reclaim his memory with reverence and awe.

One can imagine the scene on the day of his funeral: a cold January sun straining through gray clouds, snow crunching beneath boots, a minister speaking words of resurrection beside an open grave. His widow Susan, flanked by sons and daughters, clutching a folded handkerchief in one hand and a small Bible in the other. And as the coffin was lowered, perhaps someone whispered:

“He built this. All of it. Not just the farm, but the family.”

Final Reflections: The Meaning of a Life

Joseph Cromwell was not a famous man. He wrote no books, commanded no battalions, and owned no empires.

But in the soil of two provinces, he carved out a home for his people. In a nation reluctant to claim him, he stood tall and said, “I belong.” In the arms of two women — Cecilia Hatfield and Susan Jane Miller — he built not just a family, but a legacy.

His life touched every era of transformation: from post-Loyalist Black settlements in Nova Scotia to Confederation, from rural agriculture to cross-border migration. He died free, respected, and remembered — and that, in the long arc of Black history, is no small thing.

Even now, as his name resurfaces in family trees and digital archives, Joseph seems to whisper across time:

“I sowed. You reap. Tell the story.”

And now you have.