Until the early twentieth century, toll roads were a common occurrence in Hamilton and other Canadian cities. Private businesses would construct and maintain roads and reserve the right to collect fees at toll gates or toll houses along the route. In her book, The Journey from Tollgate to Parkway: African Canadians in Hamilton, historian Adrienne Shadd reports that there were numerous toll gates surrounding the urban centre of Hamilton in the 1880s, including “York Street, John, James, Main, and Barton Streets, and at both ends of King Street.”

According to Shadd’s research, Julia Berry was listed as the toll keeper at the top of James Street which was a major thoroughfare into the city of Hamilton. Julia wasn’t the only female toll keeper in Hamilton at the time, but as a Black woman, she likely faced additional prejudice in a demanding job with long hours and disgruntled travelers sometimes making trouble over paying the fare. 

Another remarkable detail about Berry’s story is that women’s labour was rarely recorded in census collection data. Shadd notes that throughout the nineteenth century, census takers would regularly omit recording women’s waged and unwaged work when a husband was present in the home. Julia Berry’s listed occupation, alongside her husband Henry in the 1881 census provides valuable insight and a public record of her work. 

These types of toll roads were abolished around 1903 by King Edward VII, shortly after his ascension to the throne, as part of a larger standardization of transportation routes across Canada. Julia, Henry and their children eventually relocated closer to downtown Hamilton from the Mountain. Julia outlived Henry by many years and spent much of her later life living with her daughter at 94 Oxford Street. Many of her descendants are still living in the area. Julia Washington Berry’s story is part of an underreported and underrepresented history of the working contributions of Black women in Hamilton in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.