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The Long Look Estate in East End, Tortola, British Virgin Islands, claims to be the oldest free black community in the Western world. [1]
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(March 2018) |
The Long Look Estate in East End, Tortola, British Virgin Islands, claims to be the oldest free black community in the Western world. [1]
In 1776 Samuel Nottingham, a Quaker, manumitted 25 slaves and gave them 50 acres (200,000 m2) of land in Long Look in Tortola, directing them to cultivate it for the common good. Quakers were prominent in the abolition movement; Nottingham's action pre-dates the foundation of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade by more than a decade.
A report made in 1823 by a John Dougan states "So quiet and retired had these Persons lived there, that although I have been for many years residing in the Island, yet I derived no knowledge of the Situation and Circumstances regarding these People..." At the time of Dougan's report, the population of the estate had increased to 43. He further reported that "Not one of them is in debt, and their Property is free from all Incumbrance. That 12 of the grown up Persons are admitted Members of the Westleyan Methodist Society, and with their Children attend regularly the Methodist Chapel at the East End of the Island ... since their Emancipation to the present Day none of them have been sued in Court, or brought before a Magistrate to answer a complaint against them. One of them once obtained a Warrant against a Person who had assaulted him, who begging his Pardon, He forgave Him."
In 2002 the Virgin Islands legislature passed laws which required residents of the estate to sell their land to other residents of the estate if they were prepared to pay the same price, to preserve the cultural heritage of the area. [2] The measure was not universally popular, as it made it more difficult for land-owning families to sell their property, but it is nonetheless thought to be an important step in securing the historical legacy of the Territory.
The freed slaves (as was common at the time) took the surname of their last owners, and went by the family name of Nottingham. Although many other former slave owners' descendants are still well represented within the Territory, by the twenty-first century no Nottinghams appeared on the voter's roll or the telephone directory.
The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands and north-west of Anguilla. The islands are geographically part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles and part of the West Indies.
The History of the British Virgin Islands is usually, for convenience, broken up into five separate periods:
Saint John is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States.
Christian views on slavery are varied regionally, historically and spiritually. Slavery in various forms has been a part of the social environment for much of Christianity's history, spanning well over eighteen centuries. Saint Augustine described slavery as being against God's intention and resulting from sin. In the eighteenth century the abolition movement took shape among Christians across the globe.
Tortola is the largest and most populated island of the British Virgin Islands, a group of islands that form part of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands. It has a surface area of 55.7 square kilometres with a total population of 23,908, with 9,400 residents in Road Town. Mount Sage is its highest point at 530 metres above sea level.
Jost Van Dyke is the smallest of the four main islands of the British Virgin Islands, measuring roughly 8 square kilometres. It rests in the northern portion of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. Jost Van Dyke lies about 8 km (5 mi) to the northwest of Tortola and 8 km (5 mi) to the north of Saint John. Little Jost Van Dyke lies off its eastern end.
The House of Assembly of the British Virgin Islands, until 2007 known as the Legislative Council, has 15 members: 13 directly elected for four-year terms, and two ex officio members.
Slavery at common law in the British Empire developed slowly over centuries, and was characterised by inconsistent decisions and varying rationales for the treatment of slavery, the slave trade, and the rights of slaves and slave owners. Unlike in its colonies, within the home islands of Britain, until 1807, except for statutes facilitating and taxing the international slave trade, there was virtually no legislative intervention in relation to slaves as property, and accordingly the common law had something of a "free hand" to develop, untrammelled by the "paralysing hand of the Parliamentary draftsmen". Two attempts to pass a slave code via Parliament itself both failed, one in the 1660s and the other in 1674.
St. Phillip's Anglican Church, also known as the African Church, in the Kingstown area of Tortola in British Virgin Islands, was built in 1840 by a community of Africans who had been liberated from illegal slave ships.
Fort Purcell is a ruined fort near Pockwood Pond on the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands.
John Coakley Lettsom FRS was an English physician and philanthropist born on Little Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands into an early Quaker settlement. The son of a West Indian planter and an Irish mother, he grew up to be an abolitionist. He founded the Medical Society of London in 1773, convinced that a combined membership of physicians, surgeons and apothecaries would prove productive. As the oldest such in the United Kingdom, it is housed in London's medical community at Lettsome House, Chandos Street, near Cavendish Square. Lettsom was its mainstay, as founder, president and benefactor.
Arthur William Hodge was a Tortola-born planter, serial killer and politician who was executed by hanging in 1811 for the crime of murdering one of his slaves. Born on the British Virgin Islands, Hodge studied at Oriel College, Oxford, matriculating in 1781 before briefly serving as an officer in the 23rd Regiment of Foot. Returning to Tortola in 1803, he settled down to a life as a plantation owner while also pursuing a political career, serving in both the Executive Council and Legislative Assembly of the British Virgin Islands. In 1811, Hodge was hung after being found guilty of murdering a slave he owned, the first British subject to be executed for such a crime.
In common with most Caribbean countries, slavery in the British Virgin Islands forms a major part of the history of the Territory. One commentator has gone so far as to say: "One of the most important aspects of the History of the British Virgin Islands is slavery."
The law of the British Virgin Islands is a combination of common law and statute, and is based heavily upon English law.
When the Dutch and Swedes established colonies in the Delaware Valley of what is now Pennsylvania, in North America, they quickly imported enslaved Africans for labor; the Dutch also transported them south from their colony of New Netherland. Enslavement was documented in this area as early as 1639. William Penn and the colonists who settled in Pennsylvania tolerated slavery. Still, the English Quakers and later German immigrants were among the first to speak out against it. Many colonial Methodists and Baptists also opposed it on religious grounds. During the Great Awakening of the late 18th century, their preachers urged slaveholders to free their slaves. High British tariffs in the 18th century discouraged the importation of additional slaves, and encouraged the use of white indentured servants and free labor.
Willem Hunthum was a Dutch merchant and the last legally recognised Dutch owner of Tortola in what later became the British Virgin Islands. Hunthum was regarded as either Patron or "Governor" of the Territory from 1663 to 1672 when control of the islands passed to the British in the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Hunthum died at some point between 1672 and 1678.
A slave insurrection started on Sankt Jan in the Danish West Indies on November 23, 1733, when 150 African slaves from Akwamu, in present-day Ghana, revolted against the owners and managers of the island's plantations. Led by Breffu, an enslaved woman from Ghana, and lasting several months into August 1734, the slave rebellion was one of the earliest and longest slave revolts in the Americas. The Akwamu slaves captured the fort in Coral Bay and took control of most of the island. They intended to resume crop production under their own control.
Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas.
Colonel Thomas Moody was a British geopolitical expert to the British Colonial Office; Commander of the Royal Engineers in the West Indies; Director of the British Royal Gunpowder Manufactory; Inspector of Gunpowder; and Director of the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Land Company.
The effects of Hurricane Irma in the British Virgin Islands were significant in terms of both human and socio-economic impact on the Territory. Hurricane Irma struck the British Virgin Islands as a Category 5 hurricane during the daylight hours of Wednesday, 6 September 2017. It caused widespread destruction, and killed a total of four people. The eye of the hurricane traveled over the three major islands in the group: Virgin Gorda, Tortola and Jost Van Dyke.
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