" Clearing the land" Alex Nolan in New Canaan 40 x 40 acrylic on canvas

​New Canaan was a small settlement between Essex to the Southeast and McGregor to the Northwest on Maiden Road in Essex County, Ontario, today officially part of the town of Essex. New Canaan was initially settled in the 1820s by Afro-Americans who had escaped from slavery in the American South, many of them from Kentucky. When the freedom boundary shifted to the Canada–United States border with the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, additional families seeking refuge and coming along the Underground Railroad into Canada joined the original black settlers in New Canaan. My great grandfather Alex Nolan was one of these early settlers.