1755 – ?). He was formerly enslaved by Ralph Izard in St. George, South Carolina. He worked on a rice plantation and grew up on Combahee. When he was young he was valued at 100 pounds. In 1778 Izard made his escape. During the American Revolution he worked for the British army in the wagonmaster-general's department. He was on one of the final ships to leave New York in 1783. He traveled on the Nisbett in November, which sailed to Port Mouton. The village burned to the ground in the spring of 1784 and he was transported to Guysborough. There he raised a family and still has descendants that live in the community. Education in the Black community was initially advocated by Charles Inglis who sponsored the Protestant Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Some of the schoolmasters were: Thomas Brownspriggs (c.1788–1790) and Dempsey Jordan (1818–?). There were 23 Black families at Tracadie in 1808; by 1827 this number had increased to 30 or more. Abolition of slavery, 1787–1812 While most Blacks who arrived in Nova Scotia during the American Revolution were free, others were not. Enslaved Black peoples also arrived in Nova Scotia as the property of White American Loyalists. In 1772, prior to the American Revolution, Britain outlawed the slave trade in the British Isles followed by the Knight v. Wedderburn decision in Scotland in 1778. This decision, in turn, influenced the colony of Nova Scotia. In 1788, abolitionist James Drummond MacGregor from Pictou published the first anti-slavery literature in Canada and began purchasing slaves' freedom and chastising his colleagues in the Presbyterian church who enslaved people. Historian Alan Wilson describes the document as "a landmark on the road to personal freedom in province and country." Historian Robin Winks writes "[it is] the sharpest attack to come from a Canadian pen even into the 1840s; he had also brought about a public debate which soon reached the courts." In 1790 John Burbidge freed the people he had enslaved. Led by Richard John Uniacke, in 1787, 1789 and again on January 11, 1808, the Nova Scotian legislature refused to legalize slavery. Two chief justices, Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange (1790–1796) and Sampson Salter Blowers (1797–1832) waged "judicial war" in their efforts to free enslaved people from their owners in Nova Scotia. They were held in high regard in the colony. Justice Alexander Croke (1801–1815) also impounded American slave ships