Pre-emption was the legal method of acquiring Crown land that had not been fully surveyed by claiming and improving it for settlement and agricultural purposes. The first Black pre-empters on Salt Spring from California arrived in the summer of 1859. They included E.A. Booth, Armstead Buckner, William Isaacs, and Fielding Spotts. Black settlers later in that same year included Abraham Copeland, Levi Davis, W.L. Harrison, the Jones brothers (John Craven, William Allen, and Elias), William Robinson, and Hiram Whims. Daniel Fredison, a Black man from Hawaii, also settled on the island.
Salt Spring Island Archives has mapped 26 Black homesteads
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