Sir William Robert Wolseley Winniett (born 2 March 1793, Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. - d. 4 Dec. 1850, Accra - Ghana) was the Governor General of Gold Coast at Cape Coast Castle (Ghana). He worked to abolish the slave trade on the Slave Coast of West Africa. [1] [2]
Winniett joined the Royal Navy at Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1807 on HMS Cleopatra. While aboard Cleopatra, under the command of Samuel Pechell, Winniett fought in the action of 22 January 1809 and the Invasion of Martinique (1809). [3] [4]
He also served on the flagship HMS Tonnant under Sir Alexander Cochrane, Commander-in-Chief, North American Station (1814-1815). [5] During that time, Winniett was involved in the Battle of Lake Borgne, in Louisiana in December 1814 and the Battle of New Orleans on 8 January 1815. Cochrane created a proclamation that invited Black slaves to freedom by joining the crews of the Royal Navy. [6]
On 24 December 1818, he was assigned to Morgiana, which was on the African coastal patrol to suppress the slave trade. [7] He commanded Viper (1837), Firefly (1839) and Lightning (1842). [4]
On 24 October 1845 Winniett became lieutenant governor of the Gold Coast (Ghana), under the jurisdiction of the Governor of Sierra Leone. [8] He went to the capital of Abomey (Benin) to try to abolish the slave trade (1847). (The Slave Trade Act outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 outlawed slavery altogether.)
In 1848 he led the West India Regiments and others to stop the murdering of Africans and Europeans by deposing Kaku Aka, the king of Amanahia [Apollonia] (also known as Kwaku Akka). [9] [10] [11]
With Thomas Birch Freeman as his secretary, that same year, he went to the Kingdom of Ashanti to persuade Ghezo, King of the Dahomey, in present-day Benin (also known as King Kwaku Dua; Gizu the King of Dahomi) to stop the slave trade and abolish human sacrifice.[ dubious ] [12] [13] [14] (At the time Dahomey exported 8,000 slaves a year.) [15] [16] [17] [18]
He also purchased Dutch fortresses on the Slave Coast to end Dutch slave trade. [19]
He was knighted by Queen Victoria on 29 June 1849 at Buckingham Palace. [20] [21]
He died 4 December 1850 at Jamestown/Usshertown, Accra and was interred in the cemetery at Fort Christiansborg (Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, Osu). [22] [23]
Winniett was the grandchild of Joseph Winniett (d. 1789) and the son of William Winniett (d.1824), both of Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. [23] [24] His family had seven boys and six girls. His great aunt Anne Cosby was married to Nova Scotia Council member Major Alexander Cosby. She freed her three black slaves in 1788. [25]
He was the son-in-law of William Fenwick Williams. [3] [26]
Winniett was also the maternal grandson of New York Loyalist Joseph Totten, from whose family Tottenville, Staten Island was named. [27]
The Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society placed a memorial at Sir Winniett's home in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia in 1880. [26]
Thomas Chandler Haliburton was a Nova Scotian politician, judge, and author. He made an important political contribution to the state of Nova Scotia before its entry into Confederation of Canada. He was the first international best-selling author of fiction from what is now Canada. In 1856, he immigrated to England, where he served as a Conservative Member of Parliament. He was the father of the British civil servant Lord Haliburton and of the anthropologist Robert Grant Haliburton.
Slavery in Canada includes historical practices of enslavement practiced by both the First Nations during the pre-Columbian era, and by colonists during the period of European colonization.
Events from the year 1788 in Canada.
The Royal African Company (RAC) was an English trading company established in 1660 by the House of Stuart and City of London merchants to trade along the West African coast. It was overseen by the Duke of York, the brother of Charles II of England; the RAC was founded after Charles II ascended to the English throne in the 1660 Stuart Restoration, and he granted it a monopoly on all English trade with Africa. While the company's original purpose was to trade for gold in the Gambia River, as Prince Rupert of the Rhine had identified gold deposits in the region during the Interregnum, the RAC quickly began trading in slaves, which became its largest commodity.
John Taylor Wood was an officer in the United States Navy and the Confederate Navy. He resigned from the U.S. Navy at the beginning of the American Civil War, and became a "leading Confederate naval hero" as a captain in the Confederate Navy. He was a lieutenant serving aboard CSS Virginia when it engaged USS Monitor in 1862, one of the most famous naval battles in Civil War and U.S. Naval history. He was caught in 1865 in Georgia with Confederate President Jefferson Davis' party, but escaped and made his way to Cuba. From there, he got to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he settled and became a merchant. His wife and children joined him there, and more children were born in Canada, which is where he lived out the remainder of his life.
Cape Coast Castle is one of about forty "slave castles", or large commercial forts, built on the Gold Coast of West Africa by European traders. It was originally a Portuguese "feitoria" or trading post, established in 1555, which they named Cabo Corso.
Annapolis Royal is a town in and the county seat of Annapolis County, Nova Scotia, Canada. The community was called Port Royal before 1710 and is known for having one of the longest histories in North America, pre-dating settlements at Plymouth, Jamestown and Quebec. It was the capital of Acadia and later Nova Scotia for almost 150 years, until the founding of Halifax in 1749.
The Old Burying Ground is a historic cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It is located at the intersection of Barrington Street and Spring Garden Road in Downtown Halifax.
Sir John William Dawson (1820–1899) was a Canadian geologist and university administrator.
Events from the year 1873 in the United Kingdom.
Black Nova Scotians are 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. Before the immigration reforms of 1967, Black Nova Scotians formed 37% of the total Black Canadian population.
Joseph Winniett (1726–1789) was a public official, judge and political figure in Nova Scotia. He was the first Acadian elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly. He represented Annapolis Township from 1761 to 1765 and Annapolis County from 1765 to 1770 in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.
John Rous was a Royal Navy officer and privateer. He served during King George's War and the French and Indian War. Rous was also the senior naval officer on the Nova Scotia station during Father Le Loutre's War. Rous' daughter Mary married Richard Bulkeley and is buried in the Old Burying Ground in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Thomas Birch Freeman was an Anglo-African Wesleyan minister, missionary, botanist and colonial official in West Africa. He is widely regarded as a pioneer of the Methodist Church in colonial West Africa, where he also established multiple schools. Some scholars view him as the "Founder of Ghana Methodism". Freeman's missionary activities took him to Dahomey, now Benin as well as to Western Nigeria.
Robert Field (1769–1819) was a painter who was born in London and died in Kingston, Jamaica. According to art historian Daphne Foskett, author of A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (1972), Field was "one of the best American miniaturists of his time." During Field's time in Nova Scotia at the beginning of the nineteenth century, he was the most professionally trained painter in present-day Canada. He worked in the conventional neo-classic portrait style of Henry Raeburn and Gilbert Stuart. His most famous works are two groups of miniatures of George Washington, commissioned by his wife Martha Washington.
John Handfield was a British military officer, member of the Nova Scotia Council, and office holder.
The Raid on Annapolis Royal took place on 29 August 1781 during the American Revolutionary War. The raid involved two American privateers - the Resolution and the Reprisal - attacking and pillaging Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia in revenge of the defeat of the Penobscot Expedition. The privateers took captive the commander of the militia John Ritchie, described as the "Governor of Annapolis." One historian described it as "one of the most daring and dramatic raids upon Nova Scotia."
The Raid on Charlottetown of 17–18 November 1775, early in the American Revolutionary War, involved two American privateers of the Marblehead Regiment attacking and pillaging Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, then known as St. John's Island. The raid motivated Nova Scotia Governor Francis Legge to declare martial law. Despite the raid's success, George Washington immediately freed senior colonial officials the privateers had brought back as prisoners to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Ghana–United Kingdom relations are the diplomatic, historical and trade relations between Ghana and the United Kingdom. Modern state Ghana-UK relations began when Ghana became independent from the UK in 1957.
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