Tag: England

Settlement Negotiation for the Sierra Leone Company

Courtesy of National Archives, London.

The terms of a settlement between the Sierra Leone Company and a group of Maroons.

Creators: The Sierra Leone Company founder Henry Thornton sent The Terms in a letter to William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland and Home Secretary, in October 1799. Sierra Leone colony Governor Thomas Ludlam, Maroon Superintendent George Ross, and Maroon captains Montague James, Andrew Smith, Charles Shaw, John Palmer, Thomas Johnstone, and a captain named only as Baily discussed revisions to The Terms on October 2, 1800

Date of Creation: 1799-1800

Place of origin: England and Freetown, Sierra Leone

Physical measurements: 2 pages, one covered on both sides and one single-sided

Materials: Paper and ink

Process by which it was made: Handwriting

Current location: National Archives, Kew, London, United Kingdom

Further Reading 

Kenneth M. Bilby, True-born maroons (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005).

Ruma Chopra, Almost Home: Maroons between Slavery and Freedom in Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).

Mavis C. Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796 (Amherst, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc., 1988).

Barbara Klamon Kopytoff, “Jamaican Maroon Political Organization: The effects of the Treaties,” Social and Economic Studies 25, no. 2 (June 1976), 87-105.

Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Liberty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006).

Information contributed by Rachel B. Herrmann.

Lady Frankland’s Recipe Book

Courtesy Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts of the University of Pensylvania.

A recipe book containing the handwritten culinary and medicinal recipes used by a slaveholding family.

Creator: Sarah Frankland (nee Rhett)

Date of Creation: 1750-1825

Place of origin: England

Physical measurements: 60 leaves : paper ; 181 x 111-192 x 154 mm. bound to 199 x 155 mm.

Materials: Paper, parchment, ink

Process by which it was made: Handwriting

Current location: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts of the University of Pennsylvania

Further Reading

Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).

Elaine Leong, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).

Michael W. Twitty, The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South (New York: Amistad, 2017).

Peter H. Wood, The Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina From 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. (New York: Knopf, 1974).

Information contributed by Marissa Nicosia.