Chloe Cooley was a young black woman held as a slave in Fort Erie and Queenston, Upper Canada in the late 1700s, as the area was being settled by Loyalists from the United States.

Although charges were dropped against Cooley's owner, the incident is believed to have led to passage of the Act Against Slavery, 1793, in Upper Canada.

In 1793, Cooley was held by Loyalist Adam Vrooman, a white farmer and former sergeant with Butler's Rangers who fled to Canada from New York after the American Revolution.

[1] The Crown encouraged settlement in Upper Canada and the Maritime Provinces after the war, making land grants to compensate for property lost by Loyalists in the new United States.

Some Black Loyalists, African-American slaves who had been freed by the British after leaving their rebel masters and joining the battle, had also been settled in Upper Canada, but most were resettled in Nova Scotia.

Vrooman and other slaveholders feared losing their property rights in slaves, who were legally treated as chattel, and began to sell them off.

In order to make the sale, Vrooman beat Cooley, tied her up and forced her into a small boat, aided by two other men.

He brought William Grisely, a white man who had also witnessed the abduction, to make a report to the Executive Council of Upper Canada.