The Petition of Free Negroes was a document created by a group of freed slaves who had fought for the British in the U.S. Revolutionary War, and been rewarded with land grants in Upper Canada

Upper Canada

The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...

 for their service to the Crown. Because the grants were spread around the province, isolating the freed men amongst the otherwise-white settlers, on June 29th, 1794 nineteen men from the Niagara

Niagara Peninsula

The Niagara Peninsula is the portion of Southern Ontario, Canada lying between the south shore of Lake Ontario and the north shore of Lake Erie. It stretches from the Niagara River in the east to Hamilton, Ontario in the west. The population of the peninsula is roughly 1,000,000 people...

 region submitted a petition to Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe

John Graves Simcoe

John Graves Simcoe was a British army officer and the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada from 1791–1796. Then frontier, this was modern-day southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior...

 hoping to address this.

Their petition read:

"That there are a number of Negroes in this part of the Country many of whom have been Soldiers during the late ware between Great Britain and America, and others who were born free with a few who have come into Canada since the peace, -Your Petitioners are desirous of settling adjacent to each other that they may be enabled to give assistance (in work) to those amongst them who may most want it.

Your Petitioners therfore [sic] humbly Pray that their situation may be taken into consideration, and if your Excellency should see fit to allow them a Tract of Country to settle on, separate from the white Settlers, your Petitioners hope their behaviour will be such as to shew, that Negroes are capable of being industrious, and in loyalty to the Crown they are not deficient."

Listed as having signed the petition were Jack Baker, Jack Becker, John Cesar, John Dimon, Tom Frey, John Gerof, Peter Green, Michael Grote, John Jackson, Adam Lewis, Peter Ling, Richard Pierpoint

Richard Pierpoint

Richard Pierpoint , also known as Black Dick and Captain Dick, was born about 1744 in Bondu, Senegal. When he was about sixteen he was captured and sold as a slave. He survived the crossing of the Atlantic and was sold in New York to a British officer named Pierpoint. It was common for the slaves...

, Pompadour, John Smith, Saison Sepyed, Simon Speck, Robert Spranklin, Thomas Walker and Jack Wurmwood.

The petition was turned down by Simcoe for unknown reasons, although the recent abolition of slavery in the province had generated no small amount of hostility and his refusal may have been a way of avoiding revisiting the contentious act.