Charles Victor Roman
Charles Victor Roman (July 4, 1864 – August 25, 1934) was a surgeon, professor, author and civil rights activist born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania and raised in Dundas, Ontario. He was the first Black person to graduate from Hamilton Collegiate Institute, a high school located in Hamilton, Ontario. Early life Charles Roman was the fourth child of James William Roman and Anne Walker McGuinn. His father was an enslaved man that escaped to Canada from Maryland via the Underground Railroad and his mother was the daughter of two enslaved Americans who escaped to Canada and later became successful farmers and landowners in Burford, Ontario. US census documents indicate that Charles parents lived in Williamsport, Pennsylvania with their children (which would come to include Charles) sometime before 1860. The census also indicates that James also worked as the captain of a canal boat while living in Pennsylvania. His parents would move to Burford, Ont in 1870 when Victor was six years old and then later to Dundas, Ontario in 1867 for work opportunities. Charles, then 12, found work at the Cotton Company, an industrial mill formerly known as the Cotton Factory based in Hamilton. Despite being very young, it was legal for