Sharon Robart-Johnson is author, genealogist and heritage worker extraordinaire! Formerly a volunteer archival genealogist for the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives, Sharon catalogued documents and regularly handled research requests from the public.
“My work as a genealogist had a significant impact on the Black communities,” says Sharon.
Sharon began by researching who was buried in the three cemeteries in the small community of Greenville, Nova Scotia, identifying close to 200 individuals. From there the transition to researching the rest of the Black history was easy, she says. When it was settled circa 1820, the community of Greenville was the only all-Black community in Yarmouth Town and County.
Sharon’s research has shown that many of Greenville’s settlers were descendants of slaves. The first settler, David Dize, was himself a freed slave. As a result of her painstaking research, which took her two years to complete, Sharon wrote a book, which will help preserve the important story of Nova Scotia’s black history for future generations.
Africa's Children, A History of Blacks in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia will be released December 2008 by Natural Heritage Books, part of the Dundurn Group in Toronto, Ontario.
“What I enjoy most about my work is discovering or uncovering previously unknown histories of the area,” says Sharon. “The knowledge of where the people in this area came from, what they did and how they once lived gives one a better understanding of how Yarmouth came to be what it is today.”
Sharon’s most memorable heritage moment was the discovery of the original pulpit from the Greenville United Baptist Church, a church dating back to 1853. Greenville’s first settler, David Dize, who served as pastor of the church for many years, no doubt delivered many of his sermons from this historic icon.
The pulpit brings her genealogy research to life, Sharon says. The church is still in use today, and this important artifact is now housed at the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives.