Maroon Town
Location of Maroon Town in Jamaica
Maroon Town is a settlement in Jamaica. It has a population of 3122 as of 2009. [1]
Maroon Town is a settlement in Jamaica. It has a population of 3122 as of 2009. [1]
Maroon Town is located in the conical Cockpit Country that spans parts of the parishes of St. James, St. Elizabeth and Trelawny. Located in Saint James Parish, Jamaica the community sits approximately 29 kilometers, southwest of Montego Bay, the parish capital.
This former settlement of the Jamaican Maroons has a variety of Jamaican flora and fauna. Farmers in this area invest in ground provisions (including yam) and other staples, but especially bananas. Bananas have over the years been commercially successful as a profit-making venture in this community and are also a regular staple of locals.
The Maroon Pride Banana Chips brand originated in this community.
It is a former home of runaway slaves who became Jamaican Maroons and fought two guerrilla wars against the colonial authorities, the First Maroon War of the 1730s and the Second Maroon War of 1795–6. When it was a home to these escaped slaves, it was called Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town). Once the governor, Edward Trelawny, authorised the signing of a treaty with Cudjoe in 1739, Cudjoe's Town became known as Trelawny Town. [2]
After the Second Maroon War, the colonial authorities deported the Maroons of Trelawny Town to Nova Scotia and then Sierra Leone. They then renamed the settlement Maroon Town, and since then it has been a place of archaeological research.
Maroon Town was used as a military barracks for half a century after the Trelawny Maroons were deported, but the colonial government found it difficult to maintain an outpost there. In 1812, a hurricane destroyed most of the buildings in the barracks. [3]
Since then, over the years, many officers complained about the poor state of the barracks and the hospital, as well as the frequent rainfall and dampness. The barracks became difficult to maintain, and the colonial authorities eventually abandoned the barracks in the 1850s. [4]
When scores of Trelawny Maroons returned to Jamaica following the abolition of slavery in the 1830s, many of them settled in the nearby village of Flagstaff. [5]
In 1905, visitors to Maroon Town observed some Returned Maroons from nearby Flagstaff hunting wild hogs. [6] [7]
Maroons are descendants of Africans in the Americas and Islands of the Indian Ocean who escaped from slavery, through flight or manumission, and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with indigenous peoples, eventually evolving into separate creole cultures such as the Garifuna and the Mascogos.
Accompong is a historical Maroon village located in the hills of St. Elizabeth Parish on the island of Jamaica. It is located in Cockpit Country, where Jamaican Maroons and indigenous Taíno established a fortified stronghold in the hilly terrain in the 17th century. They defended it and maintained independence from the Spanish and then later the British, after the colony changed hands.
The First Maroon War was a conflict between the Jamaican Maroons and the colonial British authorities that started around 1728 and continued until the peace treaties of 1739 and 1740. It was led by Indigenous Nubian's born to the land who helped liberate Africans to set up communities in the mountains who were coming off of slave ships. The name "Maroon" was given to these Africans, and for many years they fought the British colonial Government of Jamaica for their freedom. The maroons were very skilled, particularly in guerrilla warfare. It was followed about half a century later by the Second Maroon War.
The Second Maroon War of 1795–1796 was an eight-month conflict between the Maroons of Cudjoe's Town, a Maroon settlement later renamed after Governor Edward Trelawny at the end of First Maroon War, located near Trelawny Parish, Jamaica in the St James Parish, and the British colonials who controlled the island. The Windward communities of Jamaican Maroons remained neutral during this rebellion and their treaty with the British still remains in force. Accompong Town, however, sided with the colonial militias, and fought against Trelawny Town.
Cockpit Country is an area in Trelawny and Saint Elizabeth, Saint James, Saint Ann, Manchester and the northern tip of Clarendon parishes, mostly within the west-central side, of Jamaica. The land is marked by lush, montane forests and steep-sided valleys and hollows, as deep as 120 metres (390 ft) in places, separated by conical hills and ridges.
Jamaican Maroons descend from Africans who freed themselves from slavery in the Colony of Jamaica and established communities of free black people in the island's mountainous interior, primarily in the eastern parishes. Africans who were enslaved during Spanish rule over Jamaica (1493–1655) may have been the first to develop such refugee communities.
Francis Williams was a Jamaican scholar and poet who was one of the most notable free black people in Jamaica. Born in Kingston, Jamaica into a slaveholding family, Williams subsequently travelled to England where he officially became a British subject. After returning to Jamaica, he established a free school for free people of color in Jamaica.
Major John Jarrett was a Jamaican Maroon leader of the Maroons of Cudjoe's Town in Jamaica. He was most likely named after a neighbouring planter with a similar surname.
The Jamaican Maroons in Sierra Leone were a group of just under 600 Jamaican Maroons from Cudjoe's Town, the largest of the five Jamaican maroon towns who were deported by the British authorities in Jamaica following the Second Maroon War in 1796, first to Nova Scotia. Four years later in 1800, they were transported to Sierra Leone.
Cudjoe, Codjoe or Captain Cudjoe, sometimes spelled Cudjo – corresponding to the Akan day name Kojo, Codjoe or Kwadwo – was a Maroon leader in Jamaica during the time of Nanny of the Maroons. In Twi, Cudjoe or Kojo is the name given to a boy born on a Monday. He has been described as "the greatest of the Maroon leaders."
Major-General The Honourable George Walpole, was a British soldier and politician. He gained distinction after suppressing the Maroon insurrection in Jamaica in 1795. After entering Parliament in 1797, he served as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1806 to 1807 in the Ministry of All the Talents headed by Lord Grenville.
The Crown Colony of Jamaica and Dependencies was a British colony from 1655, when it was captured by the English Protectorate from the Spanish Empire. Jamaica became a British colony from 1707 and a Crown colony in 1866. The Colony was primarily used for sugarcane production, and experienced many slave rebellions over the course of British rule. Jamaica was granted independence in 1962.
Nancy Gardner Prince was an African-American woman born free in Newburyport, Massachusetts, She wrote about her travels in Russia and Jamaica during the nineteenth century in her autobiography titled A Narrative of The Life And Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince, published in 1850.
Colonel Edward Trelawny was a British Army officer, politician and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Jamaica from April 1738 to September 1752. He is best known for his role in signing the treaty which ended the First Maroon War between the colony of Jamaica and the Jamaican Maroons. Trelawny also sat in the British House of Commons from 1724 to 1735, representing the constituencies of West Looe and East Looe.
Cudjoe's Town was located in the mountains in the southern extremities of the parish of St James, close to the border of Westmoreland, Jamaica.
Montague James was a Maroon leader of Cudjoe's Town in the last decade of eighteenth-century Jamaica. It is possible that Maroon colonel Montague James took his name from the white superintendent of Trelawny Town, John Montague James.
Cuffee was an escaped slave in Jamaica who led other runaway slaves to form a community of free black people in Jamaica in the island's forested interior, and they raided white plantation owners at the end of the eighteenth century. The name Cuffee is a variation of the Twi Akan name Kofi, which is the name given to a boy born on a Friday.
Andrew Smith was a Maroon officer from Cudjoe's Town. His brother, Charles Samuels, was also an officer from Trelawny Town, and both officers reported to Colonel Montague James.
Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come is a village in the Cockpit Country of western Jamaica. It is now a part of a district called Aberdeen, Jamaica, in the north-east section of Saint Elizabeth Parish, and is not extinct, as was originally believed. From the Jamaican dialect, the village name translates in English as, 'If I don't send for you, don't come.'
Free black people in Jamaica fell into two categories. Some secured their freedom officially, and lived within the slave communities of the Colony of Jamaica. Others ran away from slavery, and formed independent communities in the forested mountains of the interior. This latter group included the Jamaican Maroons, and subsequent fugitives from the sugar and coffee plantations of coastal Jamaica.
18°19′48″N77°49′05″W / 18.330°N 77.818°W
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