Category: Arthington

Arthington is located on terrain that is hilly and uneven. It lies about two miles in from the St. Paul’s River and four miles northwest of Millsburg. The town is named in honor of Robert Arthington of Leeds, England, who funded the relocation of its founders from the southern United States.

The site selected for Arthington was previously an “impenetrable forest, six miles from any settlement.” According to Edward W. Blyden, the “only sounds to be heard were those made by birds on the tops of the lofty trees. There was no opening through the thick forest and dense undergrowth but the narrow path traveled for generations.”

Footnote: “Arthington, Liberia,” African Repository, Nov. 1873, p. 337.][“Arthington, Liberia,” African Repository, Nov. 1873, p. 337: “Visit to Arthington, African Repository, April 1889, p. 44.

Three of their leaders were Alonzo Hoggard, Solomon York and Richard Rayner. Their progress was described by a visitor who arrived skeptical but left impressed.

Hoggard, for example, had “no assistance from native boys, no aid but four small sons, and with them alone he has planted out five thousand coffee trees and is cultivating one-and-a-half acres in potatoes, two acres in cassava, four acres in rice, one-half acre in eddoes, besides many garden vegetables.” He also had eight hogs.

Within three years, York had “nearly three thousand coffee trees growing, many bearing, and a large supply of cassavas, eddoes, and other bread stuff.” Rayner, too, had planted a large lot of coffee. He also had “some acres of sugar-cane, some ginger, and his wife offers to sell a few barrels of Indian corn, the result of her own industry.”

Footnote: “Arthington, Liberia,” African Repository, Nov. 1873, p. 337.