Black refugee (War of 1812)

Those who settled in Trinidad were generally from Virginia and Maryland, and Georgia and Spanish Florida, via Bermuda, where they were evacuated on British ships from the East Coast.

Those African Americans who bore arms for the British in the second Corps of Colonial Marines, recruited from the younger of the total of 4,000 refugees, settled in Trinidad in 1816, where they became known as the Merikins (also spelled as Merikens).

[2] During 1813 and the War of 1812 with the United States, Vice Admiral Warren was ordered to receive aboard his ships any blacks who might petition him for assistance.

[3] Captain Robert Barrie of HMS Dragon reported to Admiral Warren "there is no doubt but the blacks of Virginia and Maryland would cheerfully take up arms and join us against the Americans.

"[4] By the time that the Admiralty received the report, they had already decided to order Warren's successor, Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, to encourage emigration of African-American slaves.

[9] The passengers on the shipwrecked HMS Atalante (1808) included twenty American refugee slaves from the James River in Virginia.

[11] But an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 refugees arrived individually or in small family groups during the antebellum years, seeking freedom from slavery along the Underground Railroad from the United States.

Large numbers of Black refugees settled in North and East Preston, Nova Scotia, where their descendants still live.

The migration included the religious leader and abolitionist Richard Preston, who established the first African Baptist church in Halifax; the parents of William Hall, one of Canada's first winners of a Victoria Cross; and Benjamin Jackson, a decorated veteran of the American Civil War.