A couple used their Toronto property to help fugitive slaves. But when nearby streets were named, the city chose athletes
Black History Month
Sarah and Francis Johnston, a biracial couple who faced discrimination, gave work opportunities to runaway slaves who fled north and arrived at their farm.
Updated Feb. 21, 2024 at 2:05 p.m.
Feb. 4, 2024
An 1885 family photo showing Eunice Johnston’s great-aunt Harriet as a baby on her mother’s lap. Her mother was Mary, daughter of Francis and Sarah Johnston.
Eunice Johnston
By Edward Brown, Special to the Star
Gathered with other officials and dignitaries to announce street names for the new 60-acre Crosstown Community, the local city councillor told a reporter: “Don Mills, in comparison to the rest of the city, doesn’t have a lot … of history, but there are a lot of people from Don Mills who made a contribution to the city.”
The comments by Denzil Minnan-Wong were made at Aspen Ridge Sales Centre on the northwest corner of Don Mills and Eglinton in June 2022.
Minnan-Wong was no doubt unaware biracial couple Sarah and Francis Johnston farmed here 175 years ago and whose actions irrevocably changed lives.
The media event occurred within months of city council’s revision of its Street Naming Policy, intended to “promote a broader understanding of history and its legacy on communities.” Recipients included former Maple Leaf Mike Palmateer and Olympic skier Steve Podborski. Former Raptor and NBA champion Kyle Lowry would also have a street named for him, while pioneers Sarah and Francis Johnston were overlooked.
Eunice Johnston, 77, a Taylor descendant who resides in Sundridge, Ont., would give anything to travel back in time and pay closer attention to her great-aunt Harriet. Interest in her family’s history began about 25 years ago, but even further back, as a teenager, Johnston revelled in family lore but “I didn’t write anything down, and it was 50 years ago. If only I could go back and sit in Aunt Harriet’s kitchen and listen.”
Sarah Taylor’s marriage to Francis Johnston intrigues her to this day. Extensive genealogical research has not turned up a photograph of the couple.
The story begins in the United States around 1840. The abolition of slavery in the British Empire led to fugitive slaves from the United States seeking asylum in Canada. Fifteen-year-old Francis Johnston of Maryland, his father and two brothers escaped captivity and followed the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes designed to convey runaway slaves to freedom in Canada.
The Johnstons resided in Todmorden and purchased a small lot on the edge of the Don Valley for $125 in 1849. Despite gaining their liberty in predominantly white, Protestant Toronto, they faced discrimination compounded by their Catholic faith.
Sarah Taylor’s influential family began in humble surroundings in England. Born around 1821, when she was four, her parents, James and Sarah, and her older brother Abraham packed their trunks and, along with James’s brother John and his large family, immigrated to North America and settled in the Don Valley in 1825.
The Taylors thrived, buying thousands of acres and operating mills on the Don River. Their wealth grew, and they branched into other profitable enterprises. Business interests included farming, paper manufacturing, the Morse Soap Factory, saw and flour mills, a dye and chemical factory, banking, brickmaking, and a significant stake in the Globe newspaper. At its height, the Don Valley Pressed Brick Co. (later Don Valley Brickworks) produced 12 million bricks annually.
James Taylor House, formerly located on the current site of Ontario Science Centre, is where Sarah Taylor resided with her family before marrying Francis Johnston.
North York Historical Society
Scott Kennedy writes about the Taylors in his book, “Don Mills,” noting that at one point, “The family owned over 2,000 acres of tableland to the north and east of their valley holdings, including present day Thorncliffe Park, Flemingdon Park, and everything between Leslie Street and the Don Valley Parkway, to half a mile north of Eglinton Avenue East.”
Sarah’s family resided in a home where the Ontario Science Centre stands today. Her father and brother farmed the surrounding land.
Eunice Johnston doesn’t know precisely how the couple met, but when Sarah Taylor was in her late 20s, she wed Francis Johnston. “From what Aunt Harriet said, he worked for the Taylors as a driver, but I’m not sure if he was driving for the mill or whether he was a coachman for the family.”
In addition to marrying a Black man, Sarah, raised in a staunch Methodist household, converted to her husband’s faith. The consequence of her actions was banishment from the family.
“Obviously, she loved him,” says Eunice Johnston. “She gave up everything.”
Sarah and Francis’s marriage produced four children. Their third daughter, Mary, was Eunice Johnston’s great-great-grandmother. The couple also took in an orphaned nephew. Sarah appeared to have an ally in a cousin, George Taylor. The provincial land registry indicates George transferred six-and-a-half acres to Sarah in 1854 on the northwest corner of Don Mills and Eglinton for a nominal amount.
The ostensibly small act had an enormous impact.
A few years earlier, the U.S. government had passed the Fugitive Slave Act that required escaped slaves, upon capture in free states, to be returned to their owners. The passage of the legislation saw the number of asylum seekers fleeing slavery increase significantly. Surrounded by hostile family, Sarah and Francis’s farm prospered, and they did something extraordinary, opening their farmhouse to fugitive slaves seeking asylum in Canada just as Francis had done years earlier. Refugees arrived at the Johnston farm with skills learned on plantations and quickly found work at area farms and industry.
Scott Kennedy writes in “Don Mills,” “The farm was ideally situated for outside employment opportunities as it sat halfway between the Taylor family’s paper mills in Todmorden and Alexander Milne’s mills at Lawrence Avenue East and the East Don River.”
The explanation for George Taylor’s largesse is unknown. Eunice Johnston surmises her distant relative showed Sarah kindness when others shunned her because “It was just his personality. He was the only (Taylor) to talk to them. He made sure they got land. Maybe he liked Francis.” His generosity was not a one-off. The provincial land registry indicates he transferred another 60 acres to Sarah in the spring of 1861.
Unfortunately, Sarah and Francis Johnston benefited only briefly. The same summer, Francis died of a severe bronchial infection at 36. Sarah faced the daunting task of maintaining the enlarged farm while raising five youngsters, all under 10. Overwhelmed by responsibilities and her wealthy family being of no help, she leased out the farm and relocated to the city with her children.
A year later, Sarah unexpectedly fell seriously ill and died at 41. She was interred beside her late husband at St. Michael’s Cemetery on Yonge Street. Aware her kin would not take in her mixed-race children, she made provisions in her will to ensure they received an education and be cared for temporarily by the Sisters of St. Joseph’s at the House of Providence. Her property remained leased until her eldest son Alexander reached adulthood, wherein he returned to the farmstead at Don Mills and Eglinton, sent for his younger siblings, and resumed farming.
Alexander Johnston married, farmed here for two decades and even expanded his holdings. Eventually, he sold the farm to his younger sister Mary and her husband.
A representative from the city explained that Crosstown Community initiated an application for street name approval in 2020 under the previous policy, which did not require a historical evaluation of the site. Today, according to the new policy’s six guiding principles, Sarah and Francis Johnston would be eligible for the distinction.
Historian Scott Kennedy, reached by telephone, said officials missed an opportunity to honour a deserving pioneer family, adding, “Anytime they select street names and overlook suitable historical candidates, it is beyond belief.”
Eunice Johnson is magnanimous. “The developer wouldn’t have known the history of the area, and the people who are going to live there probably know more about a basketball player than someone who lived over a hundred years ago.”
Mary Dart (nee Johnston), with her husband Stephen in Toronto’s Todmorden area circa 1920s. Mary was the third child of Sarah and Francis Johnston.
Eunice Johnston
Edward Brown is a Toronto-based writer.
