ctober, 1794; and the purchaser sold him again
January, 1795, for L50 New York Currency ($125.00). (_Mich. Hist.
Coll._, XIV, p. 417.) But it would seem that from 1770 to 1780 the
price ranged to $300 for a man and $250 for a woman (_Mich. Hist.
Coll._, XIV, p. 659). The number of slaves in Detroit is said to have
been 85 in 1773 and 179 in 1782 (_Mich. Hist. Coll._, VII, p. 524).

[13] A number of interesting wills are in the Court of Probate files
at Osgoode Hall, Toronto. One of them deserves special mention, viz.:
that of Robert I. D. Gray, the first Solicitor General of the
Province, whose death was decidedly tragic. In this will, dated August
27, 1803, a little more than a year before his death, he releases and
manumits "Dorinda my black woman servant ... and all her children from
the State of Slavery," in consequence of her long and faithful
services to his family. He directs a fund to be formed of L1,200 or
$4,800 the interest to be paid to "the said Dorinda her heirs and
Assigns for ever." To John Davis, Dorinda's son, he gave 200 acres of
land, Lot 17 in the Second Concession of the Township of Whitby and
also L50 or $200. John, after the death of his master whose body
servant and valet he was, entered the employ of Mr., afterwards Chief,
Justice Powell; but he had the evil habit of drinking too much and
when he was drunk he would enlist in the army. Powell got tired of
begging him off and after a final warning left him with the regiment
in which he had once more enlisted. Davis is said to have been in the
battle of Waterloo; he certainly crossed the ocean and returned later
on to Canada. He survived till 1871, living at Cornwall, Ontario, a
well-known character--with him, died the last of all those who had
been slaves in the old Province of Quebec or the Province of Upper
Canada.

In the _Canadian Archives, M. 393_, is the copy of a letter, the
property of the late Judge Pringle of Cornwall, by Robert I. D. Gray
to his sister Mrs. Valentine dated at Kempton February 16, 1804, and
addressed to her "at Captain Joseph Anderson's, Cornwall, Eastern
District": speaking of a trip to Albany, New York, he says:

"I saw some of our old friends while in the states, none was I more
happy to meet than Lavine, Dorin's mother. Just as I was leaving
Albany I heard from our cousin Mrs. Garret Stadts who is living in
Albany in obscurity and indigence owing to her husband being a drunken
idle fellow, that Lavine was living