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.
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.
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.
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.