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Timbuctoo: NJ's Free Black Community Before the Civil War

Finding Free African Americans During the Antebellum Period

This informative presentation will offer insight into Timbuctoo, an antebellum community of resilient free Black people that settled in New Jersey in 1826.

The Ocean County Library is pleased to present a penetrating look at a remarkable Garden State locale that presaged civil rights 50 years after the Revolutionary War.

Join us for "Timbuctoo: New Jersey's Free Black Community before the Civil War" in the Bishop Building of the OCL Toms River Branch, 3:30PM Wednesday, March 19.

Guy Weston MA, Managing Director of the Timbuctoo Historical Society, will detail Burlington County communities settlement in 1826, the people who enable its formation and significant episodes such as its role in the Underground Railroad system. In September 1826, four Black men embarked upon a challenging and significant mission the founding of a free Black settlement in New Jersey, a remarkable achievement in the antebellum era. In time, this community established schools, a church, and a cemetery, and became a safe haven in the North to "many weary wanderers who had escaped the yoke of slavery". Likely motived by a shard vision, Hezekiah Hall, a formerly enslaved man living in New Jersey, joined forces with fellow Mount Holly residents Ezekiel Parker and Wardell Parker, as well as David Parker from nearby Evesham, purchasing lots in the area that would later adopt the name Timbuctoo. They hoped to establish a community where they could live freely, obtain economic independence, and control their destiny. Perhaps more than any other extant documentation on Timbuctoo, the deeds declares "agency" in the sense that these early settlers had the autonomy to establish their own priorities and develop a plan to achieve them. Guy Weston's work encompasses said research and public history initiatives to raise the profile of Timbuctoo, where his fourth great-grandfather purchased land in 1829. Guy's efforts include interpretive signage in the village, educational collaborations with local teachers and preservation of the Timbuctoo cemetery, where the oldest gravestone bears a date of 1847. He serves as editor of the Afro-American Historical an Genealogical Society Journal, a contributing writer to the AAHGS Journal and AAHGS News, and a visiting scholar at Rutgers University.

The Timbuctoo Historical Society is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2019 to "seek, documents, preserve, interpret the history and heritage of Timbuctoo..."The group has been featured extensively in the Cherry Hill Courier Post, Burlington County Times, Discover New Jersey, NJ.com, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post and CBS Philadelphia.

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