The Coloured Corps Canadian

There are few concrete facts known about The Coloured Corps, but it is thought that the regiment is rooted with a man called Richard Pierpont. Pierpont was a native of Africa was sold into slavery at a young age. He appears to have won his freedom by fighting for the British in the American Revolutionary War. He was subsequently granted land near St. Catherines in Upper Canada, and became a prosperous farmer. As an older man, it seems that Pierpont petitioned the Upper Canadian Legislature in 1812 to form a black regiment to fight in the conflict against the Americans. His request was granted with the condition that the commanding officer would be a white man, and it was decided that Captain Robert Runchey would lead the corps. Pierpont himself joined on as a private though he was already at least sixty years of age. The unit consisted of about fifty men from the Niagara region, many of whom had escaped slavery in the United States and were surviving as labourers or indentured servants. The men definitely saw action at Queenston Heights, fighting alongside John Norton’s Iroquois force against Winfield Scott’s Americans who occupied the heights. The unit was formally embodied into the militia as The Corps of Articifers in the spring of 1813, but seems to have been relegated to non-combat support. The unit was to be used solely as a labour force to construct defenses at Burlington and Fort George. It did see action manning the guns when Americans attacked the fort in May of 1813. Nothing else is known about their subsequent participation in the war. Records show that the unit was retired from service in the spring of 1815.