African Nova Scotians in the Age of Slavery and Abolition

John Farmer's ancestors would likely have been brought to Shelburne in 1783. Clara Dennis visited with Farmer in the kitchen of his home at Birchtown on a summer's day in the early 1930s. He recounted his father's reminiscences of Jupiter and Venus, the freed slave couple from whom their family was descended. John Farmer had raised a large family in the house he built with money earned on the fishing banks. As he expressed it, "Ah drawed the money for this heah house out o' the banks." (Clara Dennis, Down in Nova Scotia, Toronto, 1934)

Date: [early 1930s]

Photographer: Clara Dennis

Reference: Clara Dennis  Nova Scotia Archives  accession number 1983-468/33 negative number: N-8877