Nova Scotian Settlers
[3] The Nova Scotian Settlers were jointly led by African American Thomas Peters, a former soldier, and English abolitionist John Clarkson.
Although the Jamaican Maroons and other transatlantic immigrants contributed toward the development of Freetown, the 1200 Nova Scotian Settlers were the single greatest Western black influence.
The Nova Scotian Settlers have been the subject of many social science books, which have examined how they brought "America" to Africa, because they naturally carried their culture with them.
During the American Revolutionary War, the British offered freedom to slaves who left rebel masters and joined their forces.
[5] The Nova Scotian Settlers to Sierra Leone tended to speak early forms of African-American Vernacular English; some from the Low Country of South Carolina spoke Gullah, a kind of creole more closely related to African languages.
After its officials learned what democratic and 'American' ideals the Nova Scotians held and practised, the Company did not allow other former slaves to immigrate in large groups to the new colony.
Fifteen ships, the first fleet to bring Free blacks to Africa, left Halifax Harbour on January 15, 1792, and arrived in Sierra Leone between February 28 and March 9, 1792.
After settling in Sierra Leone, many Nova Scotian blacks intermarried with Europeans as the colony developed.
The Nova Scotians' political ideology of a democratic, representative government was at odds with the Sierra Leone Company's managing an imperialistic colony.
The aftermath of this was that Nathaniel Snowball and Luke Jordan established their own colony on Pirate's Bay to live as free men just as the Ezerlites.
The Maroons became a cohesive trading unit, they displaced the Nova Scotians as the main traders in Sierra Leone in the 1820s.
Nova Scotian traders such as Cato Preston, Eli Ackim, William Easmon, and John Kizell were forced to give up their homes because of business ventures gone wrong.
[8] James Walker noted that Settler pronunciation and grammar originated in the American South and was "perpetuated as the language of their preachers and teachers, and was regarded, in the nineteenth century, as a distinct dialect.
[20] Extramarital affairs were also prominent in the community and some Settler men had mistresses and provided for their illegitimate children; many times they left land and property for them in their wills.
The majority of Nova Scotians were Methodist or members of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion; a smaller minority were Baptist.
When the Elizabeth, a hired armed tender serving under the Royal Navy from 22 January 1808 to 27 April 1809,[21] arrived from New York with 82 African Americans, the British did not permit them to land or settle in Freetown.
In the War of 1812, the British considered Sierra Leone as a home for the Black Refugees, another group of Africans who escaped American slavery, but instead chose to settle them in Nova Scotia and the West Indies.
[22] The Nova Scotians in the 1830s and 40s would be faced with the large-scale settlement of Africans freed from slave ships by the British Royal Navy's anti-slave trade campaign.
