St. John's Maroon Church

Last updated
St. John's Maroon Church in Freetown St. John's Maroon Church in Freetown - Mapillary (EDeX7FCMQ9WZ6NiQo7Ykcw).jpg
St. John's Maroon Church in Freetown

St. John's Maroon Church is a Methodist church located in Maroon Town, a district of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. [1] It is one of the oldest churches in the country. [2]

The Jamaican Maroons were men, women and children, originating from Jamaica who had surrendered at the end of the Second Maroon War. [1] They had been deported to Nova Scotia by the colonial authorities in 1796. [1] They were then transported to Freetown in 1800, where their opportune arrival and assistance enabled the authorities put down a rebellion by some of the Nova Scotian Settlers, the founders of Freetown. [1] They settled in an area that became known as Maroon Town. [1]

The Maroons gradually gave up their African beliefs and converted to Christianity. [1] [2] In 1820, they received a grant of land between Percival and Liverpool Street in Maroon Town. [1] Uncomfortable worshiping in Nova Scotian chapels, a group led by Charles Shaw built St. John's Maroon Church in 1822. [1] It is a small white building surrounded by a low white wall. [2]

While the Maroons gradually integrated into Freetown society, many of them continued to attend the church. [1] They followed their own brand of Methodism and maintained their independence of the Methodist establishment until 1900. [1] [2] The congregation has dwindled, but still survives. [2] The 200th anniversary of the founding of the congregation of St John's Maroon Church was celebrated in 2007. [3]

The church was declared a national heritage site in 1956 [1] under the Monuments and Relics Ordinance of 1 June 1947.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freetown</span> Capital, chief port, and the largest city of Sierra Leone

Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, educational and political centre, as it is the seat of the Government of Sierra Leone. The population of Freetown was 1,055,964 at the 2015 census.

Wilberforce is a neighborhood in Freetown, Sierra Leone. It is home to the Wilberforce military barracks, one of the largest in the country and the main barracks of the Sierra Leone military.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Nova Scotians</span> Black Canadians descended from American slaves, black Indigenous people, or freemen

Black Nova Scotians are an ethnic group consisting of Black Canadians whose ancestors primarily date back to the Colonial United States as slaves or freemen, later arriving in Nova Scotia, Canada, during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As of the 2021 Census of Canada, 28,220 Black people live in Nova Scotia, most in Halifax. Since the 1950s, numerous Black Nova Scotians have migrated to Toronto for its larger range of opportunities. The first recorded free African person in Nova Scotia, Mathieu da Costa, a Mikmaq interpreter, was recorded among the founders of Port Royal in 1604. West Africans escaped slavery by coming to Nova Scotia in early British and French Colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Many came as enslaved people, primarily from the French West Indies to Nova Scotia during the founding of Louisbourg. The second major migration of people to Nova Scotia happened following the American Revolution, when the British evacuated thousands of slaves who had fled to their lines during the war. They were given freedom by the Crown if they joined British lines, and some 3,000 African Americans were resettled in Nova Scotia after the war, where they were known as Black Loyalists. There was also the forced migration of the Jamaican Maroons in 1796, although the British supported the desire of a third of the Loyalists and nearly all of the Maroons to establish Freetown in Sierra Leone four years later, where they formed the Sierra Leone Creole ethnic identity.

Jamaican Maroons descend from Africans who freed themselves from slavery on 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.

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.

Maroon Town, Sierra Leone, is a district in the settlement of Freetown, a colony founded in West Africa by Great Britain.

Settler Town is the oldest part of the city of Freetown, now the capital of Sierra Leone, and was the first home of the Nova Scotian Settlers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cline Town</span>

Cline Town is an area in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The area is named for Emmanuel Kline, a Hausa Liberated African who bought substantial property in the area. The neighborhood is in the vicinity of Granville Town, a settlement established in 1787 and re-established in 1789 prior to the founding of the Freetown settlement on 11 March 1792.

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.

Moses "Daddy Moses" Wilkinson or "Old Moses" was an American Wesleyan Methodist preacher and Black Loyalist. His ministry combined Old Testament divination with African religious traditions such as conjuring and sorcery. He gained freedom from slavery in Virginia during the American Revolutionary War and was a Wesleyan Methodist preacher in New York and Nova Scotia. In 1791, he migrated to Sierra Leone, preaching alongside ministers Boston King and Henry Beverhout. There, he established the first Methodist church in Settler Town and survived a rebellion in 1800.

Rawdon Street Methodist Church is a Methodist historical church in what was the historical Settler Town, Sierra Leone which is now known as Freetown, Sierra Leone. Rawdon Methodist was established by African American settlers in Sierra Leone who are known in Freetown as the 'Nova Scotian Settlers'. The first minister at the church was Joseph Brown; George Carrol (Carral) and Isom Gordon assisted him with running the church. Rawdon was supported built and supported by the Nova Scotians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nova Scotian Settlers</span> Historical ethnic group that settled Sierra Leone

The Nova Scotian Settlers, or Sierra Leone Settlers, were African Americans who founded the settlement of Freetown, Sierra Leone and the Colony of Sierra Leone, on March 11, 1792. The majority of these black American immigrants were among 3,000 African Americans, mostly former slaves, who had sought freedom and refuge with the British during the American Revolutionary War, leaving rebel masters. They became known as the Black Loyalists. The Nova Scotian Settlers were jointly led by African American Thomas Peters, a former soldier, and English abolitionist John Clarkson. For most of the 19th century, the Settlers resided in Settler Town and remained a distinct ethnic group within the Freetown territory, tending to marry among themselves and with Europeans in the colony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edna Elliott-Horton</span> Sierra Leonean scholar and activisist (1904–1994)

Edna Elliott-Horton was the second West African woman from a British colony to receive a university degree after the Nigerian physician Agnes Yewande Savage, who received a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1929. A Sierra Leonean, Elliott-Horton became the first West African woman to complete a BA degree in the liberal arts, after graduating from Howard University in 1932, where Dr. Edward Mayfield Boyle, her maternal uncle, had graduated as a medical doctor. Elliott-Horton was a political activist who challenged the colonial authorities in Sierra Leone through her participation in the West African Youth League which was formally established in her living-room.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regent, Sierra Leone</span> Place in Western Area, Sierra Leone

Regent is a mountainous town in the Western Area Rural District of Sierra Leone. Regent lies approximately six miles east of Freetown, and close to the village of Gloucester.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Macormack Charles Farrell Easmon</span>

Macormack Charles Farrell Easmon, OBE, popularly known as M. C. F. Easmon or "Charlie", was a Sierra Leone Creole born in Accra in the Gold Coast, where his father John Farrell Easmon, a prominent Creole medical doctor, was working at the time. He belonged to the notable Easmon family of Sierra Leone, a Creole family of African-American descent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sierra Leone Creole people</span> Ethnic group of Sierra Leone

The Sierra Leone Creole people are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown. Today, the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Porter (historian)</span> Creole professor, historian, and author (1924–2019)

Arthur Thomas Daniel Porter III was a Creole professor, historian, and author. His book on the Sierra Leone Creole people, Creoledom: A study of the development of Freetown society, examines their society in a way in which few books of their time period had, and it is one of the most quoted books on the Creoles. He was published in East Africa and the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town)</span> Settlement of Jamaican Maroons in Westmoreland, Jamaica

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.

Charles Samuels was a maroon officer from Cudjoe's Town, and he was the brother of Captain Andrew Smith. Both officers reported to Colonel Montague James, the leader of Trelawny Town.

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.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "St. John's Maron (sic) Church". Monuments and Relics Commission. Archived from the original on 2017-02-16.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "St. John's Maroon Church, Freetown". sierraleoneheritage.org.
  3. CCEP Foundation [ dead link ]

8°29′09″N13°14′12″W / 8.4858°N 13.2366°W / 8.4858; -13.2366