In 1856, a book — The Refugee: or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada — was published. The author, Benjamin Drew, an American educator and abolitionist, collected more than 100 testimonies of slaves who had escaped from the United States to what was then Canada West. One testimony offered by Sophia Burthen Pooley, 90 years old at the time, related how she and her sister were kidnapped from their home in Fishkill, New York and their kidnapper later sold them to Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant, then living in New York State. When the war was over and lost, as far as the British were concerned, Brant moved north and brought his slaves with him.








