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In 2007, I fulfilled a long-time desire to visit Halifax and St. John (Bay of Funday) Nova Scotia, Canada. I remember reading about Nova Scotia in my fourth-grade Weekly Reader newspaper for schoolchildren.

The name Nova Scotia was not new to me as I had heard it mentioned before. My ancestors which were the Keys (Keas, Keais, Keyes) lived in Keysville. Some of my ancestors who were originally from Edgecombe, County NC spelled their name Kea. My grandmother and mother would go to Keysville often where they would sit listening on the porch to stories about how their relatives came to settle in Keysville.

On one particular visit, Lena and I had provoked some chickens in the yard of our cousin Katie after being told to leave them alone. We didn’t, and we ended up on the front porch nursing our legs where the chickens hit us hard with their beaks. That was unfortunate, but it later tuned out to be serendipity for me. It was at that time I learned about how Black people came to the Washington area from Nova Scotia.

Bishop James Walker Hood, a very prominent figure in North Carolina’s Black history, had come to pastor an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington in 1863. He set up the small church, in a tent behind the Union Army lines. Bishop Hood, a free Black, was born in 1831 in Kennett Township, Chester Pennsylvania.

He was a victim of a failed kidnapping attempt by slave traders. Because of that traumatic experience, he became an abolitionist and was said to have been acquainted with the underground railroad to Canada.

At 15 years, old his first sermon was a public address to the reaction to the 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision. During much of the Civil War, he spent much time as a missionary to Nova Scotia. There he pastored two churches in Bridgeton (where he started a Black community) and Kentville.

After the war, he became a delegate to North Carolina’s Constitutional Convention 1867-1868. Bishop Hood became assistant superintendent of educational matters for the Freedmen’s Bureau, and superintendent for the state’s educational affairs for African Americans. He helped established Fayetteville State University. Here in Washington, people heard of his work in the black communities of Nova Scotia.

Principal Alfred Gardner Davis, (1861-1939) who served as principal for the Washington Colored School beginning in 1908 to 1918 was from Halifax Nova Scotia. After hearing about the fertile ground for academia and abundant work in the lumber mills in Washington, Rev. Davis, a Presbyterian minister, encouraged others in Halifax to come to North Carolina and the Washington area.

It was said several families from Halifax sent their young children here because of (Rev.) Principal Davis’s suggestion. I found several of those children mentioned in the 1920 Beaufort County Census, many of whom were living in Bath.

The first Black class to ever graduate from Washington High School was under Principal Alfred G. Davis in 1911.
Principal Davis lived a few doors down from distant relatives of mine, Sarah and Elijah Keys. (There were also relatives of Sarah Louise Keys Evans) He shared stories with them about Nova Scotia.

Sarah also heard about possible Keys descendants coming from Nova Scotia. In one of our last conversations, I told Sarah about going to Nova Scotia. I am planning a return trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia in late spring 2025. I will share more of what I learned about that trip in future columns.

Leesa Jones is a Washington native and the co-curator of the Washington Waterfront Underground Railroad Museum.