Author: Patrick

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Grand Bassa

Bob Gray and the Liberian colony

Prior to May 1826, the colonial government of Liberia also obtained a tract of land on the north bank of the north branch of the St. John’s River from three Bassa rulers, including Bob Gray.

By May 1826, Gray had built a trading post on the land for use by the colonial government. He promised, according to Governor Jehudi Ashmun, “to turn over to the Colony all the produce he should be able to bring down from the interior of the country.”

Footnote: J. Ashmun, “Accessions of territory – and new establishments connected with the colony,” African Repository, May 1826, p. 93.

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Grand Bassa

Arrival of the repatriates

In four trips between November 1866 and May 1868, the Golconda brought a total of 1,878 emigrants, 677 of whom went to Bassa, 282 to Sinoe, 208 to Cape Palmas, and the rest to Montserrado County.

Although population estimates for Grand Bassa are not available for later in this period, the county seems to have retained the second place position after Montserrado. It received about 36 percent of the passengers brought out by the Golconda, one of the few large vessels operated by the ACS during this period.

Footnote: ACS Fiftieth Annual Report, 1867, pp. 10-12; ACS Fifty-Second Annual Report, 1869, pp. 7-8, 10; ACS Fifty-Fourth Annual Report, 1871, pp. 9-10; Cassell, 1970, pp. 250, 264; Liberia, 1848, p. 16; also Huberich, 1947, pp. 638, 649-650, 819; Williams, 1878, p. 50; Sullivan, 1978-79, p. 84.

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Grand Bassa

The miserable and divisive slave trade

By 1851, “Observer” writing in the Herald newspaper noted that the local wars in the area of Grand Bassa, which had divided the people “against themselves” had declined, and those whose chief employment had been the procuring of victims for the trade had turned to agriculture and the manufacture of palm oil.

About the previous wars, he added, “nine-tenths of this excitement have been evermore the offspring of the slave trade; to which, hitherto, what has been misnamed lawful and honorable trade [in alcohol] had contributed a melancholy share.”

Footnote: Liberia Herald, June 4, 1851, p. 32; also Liberia Herald, Sept. 30, 1848, p. 46.

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Grand Bassa

Local newspaper

One of the regional papers published from 1847 to 1907 was the People of Grand Bassa, 1867-1869.

A pension of $150 was granted in 1938 to Colonel Edward W. Leonards of Grand Bassa County, who served for 48 years in the military, including command of the Sinoe and Grand Bassa regiments in the Nana Kru Expedition of 1903.

Footnote: Acts of the Liberian Legislature, 1864, pp. 26-27; Willis-Thomas, 1985, pp. 6-7; Rogers, 1988, pp. 155, 203; Rogers, 1988, pp. 157, 212 n. 43; 222-235; Acts of the Liberian Legislature, Acts 1938, pp. 57-58.

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Grandcess

Who founded Grand Cess?

According to Klao oral tradition, Grand Cess was founded by their ancestors. The original name was Siglipo (Klao for “pass through town”).

Those ancestors came from the north and established their earliest residence at Pisiyo Sigli. They later moved south to the coast where they established the towns called Kankiya, Matiye (south of the Nonbwa River), Tuglo and Siglipo.

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Greenville

Kankiya, Siglipo and Matiye

Kankiya was later swept away by the Nonbwa River, and Siglipo came to be known as Grand Cess. Of these villages, the people of Matiye alone kept fields and canoe landing station separate from the others, suggesting it might have been settled by people of different origin.

According to Grebo oral tradition, some of their ancestors founded Grand Cess, Picininny Cess and Sasstown. The various traditions aren’t mutually exclusive. It is likely that both Klao and Grebo ancestors were involved in the town’s founding.

Footnote: Thomas Ludlam, “An account of the Kroomen, on the coast of Africa,” African Repository, April 1825, pp. 43-55; H. Scudder Mekeel, “Social administration of the Kru: A preliminary survey,” Africa 10 (1937): 75-96; Martin, 1968, p. 50; Innis, 1966, p. 142.

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Greenville

Portuguese influence

In 1462, two Portuguese ships captained by Captain Pedro de Sintra anchored near the Junk River along the coast of present-day Liberia. De Sintra’s visit marked the first European contact with the area now known as Liberia.

Later Portuguese visitors would map this coast and name countless towns, including “Grand Cess” and “New Sestros” (from the Portuguese “cesta” for the wicker baskets widely used for transporting produce in this region).

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Grandcess

Arrival of the French

French nobleman Sieur de Bellefond Nicolas Villault was the first person to publish a claim that sailors from Dieppe in the 1200s established a post at Grand Cess (called “Little Dieppe” by the French). There is no evidence to support Villault’s claim. They consists of assertions made centuries after by people who did not observe or participate in the “discovery.”

Based on direct experience at Grand Cess, Villault said Cess. “They work excellent well in Iron” because “they mended our shears for us, with which we cut out our barrs of Iron, and gave them such a temper as made them incomparably better than they were at first.”

Barbot, 1732, pp. 9-11; Adam Jones, Zur Quellenproblemmatik der Geschichte Westafrika, 1450-1900 (Stuttgard: Franz Steiner, 1990), pp. 55-58; Villault, 1670, p. 95; Sieur de Bellefond Nicolas Villault, A Relation of the Coasts of Africk called Guinee (London: John Starkey, 1670), p. 130; P. E. Hair, Adam Jones and Robin Law, eds., Barbot on Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa 1678-1712 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1992), p. xii, Letter 113, pp. 7-9, Letter 19, pp. 242, 254 n. 31; Masonen, 2000, pp. 38-51.

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Grandcess

African captives

Already underpopulated to begin with, the area now known as Liberia supplied between 80,357 and 155,406 enslaved persons to the Americas. Towns near Grand Cess exported 5,166. Included were towns like Trade Town, Grand Sestras, Rock Sestos, and Cess.  respectively.

Footnote: http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces.

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Grandcess

Township to municipality

In 1923, the legislature conferred the status of “township” on Sasstown, Sinoe County, and Grand Cess in Maryland County.

In 1935, Grand Cess was elevated to a municipality with the following officers: a commissioner, a road and street overseer, three associate magistrates, a police magistrate, a chief of police, a municipal clerk and a municipal court clerk, all to be commissioned by the president. Later that year, a Grand Cess revenue division was authorized by the legislature to hear all complaints for default in payment of taxes, licenses and other forms of internal revenue].

Footnote: Acts 1923-24, p. 7; Acts 1935, pp. 31-33; Acts 1935, p. 13.

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Greenville

Founding

Greenville was established in 1838 through the joint efforts of the Mississippi State Colonization Society and the Colonization Society of Louisiana. It is seated at the mouth of the Sinoe River. The first 37 immigrants quickly turned to growing cotton. They were all manumitted slaves from Natchez, Mississippi.

Greenville began as the smallest and least funded settlement. It would remain relatively underdeveloped for decades. The surrounding area, first called Mississippi in Africa, would come to be known as Sinoe County.

Footnote: Cassell, 1970, p. 111; Shick, 1980, p. 33; Sullivan, 1978-79; Brown, p. 87-88, 95, n. 21; also d’Amico, 1977, pp. 121-122; Cassell, 1970, pp. 103, 106-108, 111; Shick, 1980, pp. 33, 65-66, 74-75, 166, n. 2. 3, 4, 5, and 6.

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Greenville

Census of 1843

By 1843, the town’s 79 residents had 10 acres cultivated; they would be joined by 240 other immigrants between 1843 and 1845.

When a census was taken in 1843, 40 residents identified their occupations. One worked in agriculture, four were artisans, two merchants, one professional, 15 semiskilled, and 17 unskilled. There was no appointed office holder.

Footnote: U. S., Congress, Senate, U. S. Navy Department, tables showing the number of emigrants and recaptured Africans sent to the colony of Liberia by the government of the United States … together with a census of the colony and a report of its commerce, &c. September, 1843: Senate Document No. 150, 28th Cong., 2n sess., 1845.