To continue telling a diverse history of the Revolution, the Museum and Berkeley 250 are working to research the lives of the War's lesser-known figures, including women and enslaved people.
Timothy Withers was born in about 1757. It is unknown where Withers was born or if Timothy was his name at birth. He was enslaved by William Withers at one of his Goose Creek plantations, possibly Red Bank.
Though the Book of Negroes says that Withers acquired his freedom in 1779, it is more likely that he self-emancipated sometime between the death of William Withers in the autumn of 1778 and the sale of Red Bank plantation in December 1778.
Timothy Withers | 26 | Stout fellow
(from The Book of Negroes - Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester: Papers, The National Archives, Kew (PRO 30/55/100) 10427 pages 133-134.)
Withers joined up with the Black Pioneers, a British auxiliary military unit, perhaps when the group was in Charleston; his position within the Pioneers is unknown, but the jobs were often dangerous ones such as courier and scouting duties. The Company traveled with Colonel Sir Henry Clinton and were with him in New York City at the end of the War. It was here in November 1783 that Withers embarked on the Joseph, a ship used to transport formerly enslaved Black Americans to Nova Scotia. He was listed in the ship manifest as 26 years old, a “stout fellow,” and formerly enslaved by William Withers.
Nova Scotia Archives; Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; Nova Scotia Land Petitions (1765-1800); Volume Number: 20
Unfortunately, little else is known about the life of Timothy Withers. Withers made it to Nova Scotia, where he and other former Black Pioneers made lives for themselves in Annapolis County and the surrounding area.
In 1789, Withers and over 100 other formerly enslaved Black people were given property on the southern part of the peninsula. Withers, for having served with the Black Pioneers, was to given nineteen acres of farmland near Clementsvale and Digby. He was also to be granted a town lot. Whether or not Withers actually settled there is unknown; many of the names on the land grant application never used the land. A “Timothy Weathers” appears in Clements Township (now called Clementsport) census records in 1791, but it is unknown whether this is the Timothy Withers formerly of Goose Creek. More than 1,000 Black people who had evacuated to the Maritimes of Canada left for Sierra Leone in 1792; Withers may have been among them.