Millsburg | |
|---|---|
Township | |
  Millsburg Location in Liberia | |
| Coordinates: 6°28′26.4″N10°40′44.4″W / 6.474000°N 10.679000°W | |
| Country |  Liberia |
| County | Montserrado County |
| Settled | 1828 |
Millsburg is a township in Liberia. It is in Montserrado County. [1] [2]
Millsburg | |
|---|---|
Township | |
| Millsburg Location in Liberia | |
| Coordinates: 6°28′26.4″N10°40′44.4″W / 6.474000°N 10.679000°W | |
| Country | Liberia |
| County | Montserrado County |
| Settled | 1828 |
Millsburg is a township in Liberia. It is in Montserrado County. [1] [2]
In early 1828, the Millsburg settlement was established in an agreement between Colonial Agent Jehudi Ashmun and Dei chiefs. In February 1828, Millsburg was settled by a small trading company of Americo-Liberian emigrants. [3] [4] It was established on the north bank of the St. Paul River. [5] Millsburg is named for Samuel John Mills and Ebenezer Burgess, two agents of the American Colonization Society (ACS) who in 1818 made a reported on the British colony of Sierra Leone and its viability as a colony for African-American emigrants. [6] Following Millsburg's founding, other settlements were made on both banks of the river. [4]
In 1835, Mississippi Colonization Society sponsored its first group of African-American emigrants to Liberia, with most of the 71 people settling in Millsburg. [7] In the 1839 constitution of Liberia, Millsburg is mentioned as one of the settlements comprising the Commonwealth of Liberia. In 1839, the Gola chief Gatumba attacked Dei people in Millsburg. [8]
In the 1847 constitutional referendum preceding Liberia's independence, 21 voters in Millsburg voted in favor of the constitution, with none voting against it. [9] In a book published in 1850, James W. Lugenbeel described Millsburg as the Liberian settlement furthest from the sea coast. [5] In a 1898 book, William Henry Heard described Millsburg as a commercial center. [10]
Millsburg is situated on the St. Paul River. It borders Careysburg, Arthington, and Clay-Ashland. Under the 2023 to 2028 electoral map, Millsburg is a part of Montserrado County's 17th House of Representatives district. [11]
The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to the continent of Africa. It was modeled on an earlier British Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor's colonization in Africa, which had sought to resettle London's "black poor". Until the organization's dissolution in 1964, the society was headquartered in Room 516 of the Colorado Building in Washington, D.C.
Joseph Jenkins Roberts was an American merchant who emigrated to Liberia in 1829, where he became a politician. Elected as the first (1848–1856) and seventh (1872–1876) president of Liberia after independence, he was the first man of African descent to govern the country, serving previously as governor from 1841 to 1848. He later returned to office following the 1871 Liberian coup d'état. Born free in Norfolk, Virginia, Roberts emigrated as a young man with his mother, siblings, wife, and child to the young West African colony. He opened a trading firm in Monrovia and later engaged in politics.
Jehudi Ashmun was an American religious leader and social reformer from New England who helped lead efforts by the American Colonization Society to "repatriate" African Americans to a colony in West Africa. It founded the colony of Liberia in West Africa as a place to resettle free people of color from the United States.
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 2022 Census, it had a population of 1,920,914, making it the most populous county in Liberia. The area of the county measures 738.5 square miles (1,913 km2), the smallest in the country. Bensonville serves as the capital.
Bomi is a county in the northwestern portion of the West African nation of Liberia. The county was established in 1984. The county's area is 746 square miles (1,900 km2).
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.
Mississippi-in-Africa was a colony on the Pepper Coast founded in the 1830s by the Mississippi Colonization Society of the United States and settled by American free people of color, many of them former slaves. In the late 1840s, some 300 former slaves from Prospect Hill Plantation and other Isaac Ross properties in Jefferson County, Mississippi, were the largest single group of emigrants to the new colony. Ross had freed the slaves in his will and provided for his plantation to be sold to pay for their transportation and initial costs.
Edina is a city in District 1 of Grand Bassa County, Liberia. Located on the central portion of the Atlantic Coast of Liberia on the north shore of the mouth of the St. John River, it is about 3.5 miles (5.6 km) north of Grand Bassa's capitol of Buchanan. Settled in 1832, Samuel A.L. Johnson has been the city's mayor since 2018. The community is named after Edinburgh, Scotland, which provided monetary support for the foundation of the settlement.
Hilary Teague, sometimes written as Hilary Teage, was a Liberian merchant, journalist, and politician in the early years of the West African nation of Liberia. A native of the state of Virginia in the United States, he was known for his oratory skills and was prominent in early Liberian colonial politics. A leading advocate for Liberian independence from the American Colonization Society, he drafted the Liberian Declaration of Independence in 1847, serving as both a senator and the first Secretary of State for the new nation in the years that followed.
Kentucky in Africa was a colony in present-day Montserrado County, Liberia, founded in 1828 and settled by American free people of color, many of them former slaves. A state affiliate of the American Colonization Society, the Kentucky State Colonization Society raised money to transport people of color from Kentucky—freeborn volunteers as well as enslaved individuals set free on the condition that they leave the United States for Liberia. The Kentucky society bought a 40-square-mile (100 km2) site along the Saint Paul River and named it Kentucky in Africa. Clay-Ashland. named after Henry Clay's Ashland Plantation, was the colony's primary settlement.
Caldwell is a township located in Montserrado County, Liberia. Caldwell was one of the four townships established in the first wave of colonization. It is listed as one of the original settlements comprising the Commonwealth of Liberia in the 1839 Constitution, which was drafted by the American Colonization Society. The name comes from Elias B. Caldwell and family, about 1816, Presbyterians in what became Caldwell, New Jersey.
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.
Samuel Benedict was a Liberian politician and jurist who served as the 1st Chief Justice of Liberia. He was born a slave in the U.S. state of Georgia in 1792, and purchased his freedom and that of his family. He emigrated to Liberia in 1835, on the ship Indiana.
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.
An independence referendum was held in Liberia on 27 October 1846. The result was 52% in favor, with independence being declared on 26 July 1847.
Nathaniel Brander (1796–1870) was an Americo-Liberian politician and jurist who served as the first vice president of Liberia from 1848 to 1850 under President Joseph Jenkins Roberts.
Zolu Duma, also known as King Peter, was a Bassa-Dei ruler of the land situated on Bushrod Island. Bushrod Island is in Montserrado County, Liberia. Today, King Peter's Town where his Palace was stationed is in the area of Logan Town on Bushrod Island. Zolu Duma was raised by the Wuling, of the Bassa people, who had gained importance as merchants trading with the Europeans, including slaves. He ruled the Gola and Vai areas in the early 19th century.
Dixville is a township in Greater Monrovia District, Montserrado County, Liberia. The Dixville township was one of five townships founded in the second wave of colonization, between 1828 and 1847.
The Colony of Liberia, later the Commonwealth of Liberia, was a private colony of the American Colonization Society (ACS) beginning in 1822. It became an independent nation—the Republic of Liberia—after declaring independence in 1847.
Jacob W. Prout (1804–1849) was a Liberian politician and physician. He served as the secretary of the 1847 constitutional convention.