The 1840 census represents the last of the federal censuses that focus on the heads of households only. Like all of the censuses before it, the 1840 was still under the jurisdiction of the U.S ...

In 1840, the government's count found that ‘insanity and idiocy’ was 10 times more common among free Blacks than the enslaved — a number that was completely wrong but never corrected.

These houses at 11-13 Centre Ave. were once part of the neighbourhood known as the Ward, where members of Toronto’s early Black community settled in the 1800s.