The first group was joined in 1871 by repatriates from Clayhill, South Carolina led by Jefferson Bracewell. The second group included Solomon Hill and June Moore, who together formed one of the country’s most prosperous trading companies.
According to Edward W. Blyden, a frequent visitor to Arthington, some members of this second group knew the African ethnic groups to which they were connected. Hill was one. His mother was Gola, he said, and his father was from an ethnic group along the Niger.
With the aid of his seven sons, Bracewell cleared and planted thirty acres in one year. A visitor in 1873 noted, he had “1,100 coffee trees, made his large crops of rice, potatoes, and eddoes, so as to supply his own family; imported a sugar-mill, and made his own sugar and syrup last season. He has made a large coffee nursery, and is now tanning some of the best leather used in this country.
Footnote: “Arthington, Liberia,” African Repository, Nov. 1873, p. 337; “Visit to Arthington, African Repository, April 1889, p. 44.
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