Careysburg | |
---|---|
City | |
Coordinates: 6°24′12″N10°32′55″W / 6.40333°N 10.54861°W | |
Country | Liberia |
County | Montserrado County |
District | Careysburg |
Established | 1856 |
Incorporated | 1923 |
Elevation | 105 m (347 ft) |
Time zone | UTC+0 (GMT) |
Careysburg is a city in Montserrado County, Liberia. It was founded in 1856, [1] and is named in honor of Rev. Lott Carey, [1] [2] the first American Baptist missionary to Africa and a key figure in the founding of the Colony of Liberia. It is located 15 miles northeast of Monrovia. [3]
It was incorporated as a city in 1923 by an act of the Liberian legislature. [1]
Rubber and coffee farming are the major economic activities in the area. [2] It was also the site of a large Voice of America transmitter. [3]
About nine years after Liberia declared its independence on 1847, the Liberian legislature passed an Act authorizing Rev. John Seys, as an agent of the American Colonization Society to travel within the country for the purpose of locating an elevated region to establish a settlement to ensure better health conditions for Americo-Liberian settlers. [4] It was further resolved by the Liberian legislature, per Section 12 of said Act: "That the settlement to be founded in the Queh Country shall be named Careysburg, in honor of the late Rev. Lott Carey, and that all other settlements shall be named according to the pleasure of the Legislature". [4] The site that became Careysburg was selected for its abundance of fresh water, potential for agriculture, its cool temperature, absence of deadly mosquitoes, and scenic view. [4] At the time, the people living in the surrounding area were of the Kpelle, Gola, and Queh ethnic groups, and Rev. Seys negotiated with local chiefs to purchase land. [4]
In 1856, Careysburg was settled by North American freed slaves, mainly from the United States and Barbados. [2] [4] However, some Africans recaptured from ships at sea, destined for illicit sale as slaves in Europe and America, were also settled in Careysburg. [4]
The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America until 1837, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the migration of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to the continent of Africa. It was modeled on an earlier British colonization in Africa, which had sought to resettle London's "black poor".
Montserrado County is a county in the northwestern portion of the West African nation of Liberia containing its national capital, Monrovia. One of 15 counties that comprise the first-level of administrative division in the nation, it has 17 sub political districts. As of the 2008 Census, it had a population of 1,118,241, making it the most populous county in Liberia. The area of the county measures 1,912.7 square kilometres (738.5 sq mi), the smallest in the country. Bensonville serves as the capital.
Ralph Randolph Gurley was an American clergyman, an advocate of the separation of the races, and a major force for 50 years in the American Colonization Society. It offered passage to free black Americans to the ACS colony in west Africa. It bought land from chiefs of the indigenous Africans. Because of his influence in fundraising and education about the ACS, Gurley is considered one of the founders of Liberia, which he named.
Harper, situated on Cape Palmas, is the capital of Maryland County in Liberia. It is a coastal town situated between the Atlantic Ocean and the Hoffman River. Harper is Liberia's 11th largest town, with a population of 17,837.
The Republic of Maryland was a country in West Africa that existed from 1834 to 1857, when it was merged into what is now Liberia. The area was first settled in 1834 by freed African-American slaves and freeborn African Americans primarily from the U.S. state of Maryland, under the auspices of the Maryland State Colonization Society.
Lott Cary was an African-American Baptist minister and lay physician who was a missionary leader in the founding of the colony of Liberia on the west coast of Africa in the 1820s. He founded the first Baptist church in 1822, now known as Providence Baptist Church of Monrovia. He served as the colony's acting governor from August 1828 to his death in November that year.
Careysburg District is one of four districts located in Montserrado County, Liberia. Bensonville is the capital, and the total district population is 28,463.
The back-to-Africa movement was a political movement in the 19th and 20th centuries advocating for a return of the descendants of African American slaves to the African continent. The movement originated from a widespread belief among some European Americans in the 18th and 19th century United States that African Americans would want to return to the continent of Africa. In general, the political movement was an overwhelming failure; very few former slaves wanted to move to Africa. The small number of freed slaves who did settle in Africa—some under duress—initially faced brutal conditions, due to diseases to which they no longer had biological resistance. As the failure became known in the United States in the 1820s, it spawned and energized the radical abolitionist movement. In the 20th century, the Jamaican political activist and black nationalist Marcus Garvey, members of the Rastafari movement, and other African Americans supported the concept, but few actually left the United States.
Black Methodism in the United States is the Methodist tradition within the Black Church, largely consisting of congregations in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME), African Methodist Episcopal Zion, Christian Methodist Episcopal denominations, as well as those African American congregations in other Methodist denominations, such as the Free Methodist Church.
The history of slavery in Nebraska is generally seen as short and limited. The issue was contentious for the legislature between the creation of the Nebraska Territory in 1854 and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.
Cape Mesurado, also called Cape Montserrado, is a headland on the coast of Liberia near the capital Monrovia and the mouth of the Saint Paul River. It was named Cape Mesurado by Portuguese sailors in the 1560s. It is the promontory on which African American settlers established the city now called Monrovia on 25 April 1822.
New Georgia is a township in Montserrado County, Liberia that was first settled by Africans who had been taken from slave ships seized or wrecked near the United States and then sent to Liberia after several years had passed.
The history of African-American settlement in Africa extends to the beginnings of ex-slave repatriation to Africa from European colonies in the Americas.
The Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention is a Baptist Christian denomination in the United States. It is affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance.
The Maryland State Colonization Society was the Maryland branch of the American Colonization Society, an organization founded in 1816 with the purpose of returning free African Americans to what many Southerners considered greater freedom in Africa. The ACS helped to found the colony of Liberia in 1821–22, as a place for freedmen. The Maryland State Colonization Society was responsible for founding the Republic of Maryland in West Africa, a short lived independent state that in 1857 was annexed by Liberia. The goal of the society was "to be a remedy for slavery", such that "slavery would cease in the state by the full consent of those interested", but this end was never achieved, and it would take the outbreak of the Civil War to bring slavery to an end in Maryland.
Henry McNeal Turner was an American minister, politician, and the 12th elected and consecrated bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). After the American Civil War, he worked to establish new A.M.E. congregations among African Americans in Georgia. Born free in South Carolina, Turner had learned to read and write and became a Methodist preacher. He joined the AME Church in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1858, where he became a minister. Founded by free blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the early 19th century, the A.M.E. Church was the first independent black denomination in the United States. Later Turner had pastorates in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, DC.
The Presbyterian Church in Liberia is a historic church in Liberia in the Presbyterian Reformed tradition. It was formerly a Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, now it is an independent, self-governing denomination.
Morris Brown was one of the founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and its second presiding bishop. He founded Emanuel AME Church in his native Charleston, South Carolina. It was implicated in the slave uprising planned by Denmark Vesey, also of this church, and after that was suppressed, Brown was imprisoned for nearly a year. He was never convicted of a crime.
Clinton Caldwell Boone was an African-American Baptist minister, physician, dentist, and medical missionary who served in the Congo Free State and Liberia. The son of Rev. Lemuel Washington Boone and Charlotte (Chavis) Boone of Hertford County, North Carolina, he played an important role in Africa as a missionary for the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention and the American Baptist Missionary Union, now American Baptist International Ministries.
John Seys was an American reverend, missionary, and diplomat.