Last Christmas in Nova Scotia, America and their Hopes of a Better and Brighter New Year in Sierra Leone, Africa.

Draft Literature and Oral Research by Adrian Q. Labor ([email protected]) Jan 15rd, 2022 Edition.

Recreating our story across generations: Our story: recounting our ancestors’ courageous stories from a hopeful spring in New York in 1783 to a thanksgiving under the Cotton Tree in Freetown in March 1792, 230 years ago. In telling this story, if I start with the opening phrase of “Il aw? Wan de ya”, siblings, aunties,
uncles and grandparents will know that this is a “nansi stori” filled with history, folktale and wisdom expressed in Krio parables. They also know it is best told orally, with everyone gathered in one place, and with the sounds and intonations to enhance the story. If, on the other hand, I start by stating this is a history lesson, the children and grandchildren will hope that I would make it into a short text and make it available online or as a podcast so they can listen on their phones while they do other things. Regardless of how I tell the story, the historic accounts I will share are steeped in 18th century language and contexts far removed from today’s lifestyles and realities so bear with me. “Fambul dem” with the help of a focus group of family members across the generations, I am recounting the pivotal
episodes of our family story that happened over two centuries for the benefit of all.

Thomas Peters and David Edmon, 23 December 1791

Halefax December the 23 1791

The humble petion of the Black pepel lying in mr wisdoms Store Called the anoplus Compnay humbely Bag that if it is Consent to your honer as it is the larst Christmas day that we ever shall see in the amaraca that it may please your honer to grant us one days allowance of the frish Beef for a Christmas diner that if it is agreabel to you and the rest of the Gentlemon to whom it may Concern

Thomas Petus
David Edmon

“Il”, “Aw”, “Wan de ya…”

Two days before Christmas in 1791, David Edmonds, my 4th Great Grandfather (six generations ago), expressed jointly with the legendary Thomas Peters, their hopes for one last Christmas dinner in America in a letter dated December 23, 1791. Their words have survived time in an archive and was published in Christopher Fyfe’s 1991 publication “Our Children Free and Happy, Letters from Black Settlers in Africa in the 1790s.” We do not know if their request for fresh beef for Christmas dinner was met, but we do know that their hopes for this to be their last Christmas in America’s system of enslavement, inhumanity, and injustice due to their race was met. We can imagine that last Christmas dinner, with or without the fresh beef, would have been filled with the joys and hopes for a bright and prosperous New Year as free persons. They finally sailed in fifteen ships provided by the British Government from Halifax on January 15, 1792. There was a 16th Ship, the Hospital. It was recorded that 65 souls did not make it and were “deeped” at sea. Among those who arrived ill, 40 of them were buried on shore within the first few days. The ships arrived at different times in the Sierra Leone River between February and March 1792. On March 11, 1792 they marched in companies and congregations to a cotton tree and in a very ceremonial manner, they established the settlement, Freetown. The contributions of the families of David & Ann Edmonds and other Black Loyalist families is part of Canadian Black History. Unfortunately, this history was told mostly from the lives of the men, and I have yet to come across the first names of all 4th Great Grandmothers in the genealogy tree I developed as part of my research. I have called them affectionately “Mami” in telling our stories. To learn more on the Canadian side of our story, consider reading James Walker’s “The Black Loyalist the search for a promised land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone 1783-1870” and Robin Winks’ “The Blacks in Canada”.

The arrival in Freetown was captured in John Clarkson’s diary, which spoke of the Thanksgiving Ceremony under the Cotton Tree. They named it Harmony Hall. It is now believed to be the unmistakable cotton landmark of Freetown. John Clarkson was the official of the Sierra Leone Company charged with overseeing the emigration from Nova Scotia to Freetown, and he later became Governor. He is remembered fondly by many, and even my Grandparents’ generation can still recount the Governor Clarkson prayer for Freetown. The Nova Scotian settlers once again built the founding community in Freetown around the church and education of their children. The community pursued their dreams for owning lands that they and their children will have a freehold on until perpetuity. These dreams have carried on in our families for generations. Since the beginning of the settlement in 1792, there has been a multitude of written accounts in which the Nova Scotians petitioned against and frustrated every initiative employed by the Sierra Leone Company and the early British colonial administrations to deny them their inalienable rights in Africa. In his February 25, 1884 issue of the Artisan, a newspaper that recorded the industrialization of Freetown, the editor ABC Sibthorpe wrote a eulogy of the original Nova Scotian and the Jamaican Maroon settlers. In it he noted every food, fruit, vegetable and cultural legacy of the early settlers to the Krio society of which they were one of the founding groups.

Christmas season in Freetown, Sierra Leone, is the time to be joyful and thankful for our lives lived in that year. It is also the time to start a process of renewal of our hopes for a better and brighter future in the coming year. Family members and friends convey this hope with every greeting and in every “smol tok” at every church event or family celebration during the season. We do it through the story of the birth of Jesus Christ and the African traditions handed down over the years. The joys and the hopes were the same 230 years ago for David Edmonds and Ann Edmonds with three kids under 10 years (Anne, Martha and Nancy). It was the same for other families and friends who made up the Black Loyalist families in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada in 1791. Based on the timeline of historic accounts, the first two kids Anne and Martha were born in the British American Colony before 1783, Nancy Edmonds was born in Nova Scotia, between 1782-1792, and their fourth and fifth kid James and Elizabeth were born in Freetown. Martha married into the Spilsbury family Elizabeth Edmonds married Thomas Coopers. The Coopers owned land lots 172, 173, 163 and 164 of the Freetown settlement around 1815. In a way they reflect some of our African diaspora families today, with family members born on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean, as families crisscrossing the ocean in search of a better life.

The Edmonds were listed in the Sept 8, 1784 register of Negro Families (See Image 1), who sought refuge in Canada several months earlier after the British-American independence war ended to avoid “re-enslavement” by article 7 of the Paris Treaty of Sept 8, 1783. Namely, Prisoners of war on both sides are to be released; all property of the British army (including slaves) now in the United States is to remain and be forfeited. More importantly, David and Ann Edmonds freed their family and their descendants, from the next 200 years of continued enslavement and denial of civil rights imposed legally on Blacks in America. David Edmond’s owned several of the original land parcels by 1815. Namely 447, on George Street; 185-186 (huts); 179-180 (2 framed houses with shingle roof and stone cellar; 181-182 (no buildings); 174, 175 177 (No Buildings); 172 Framed house with shingle roof; 171 no buildings all on Charlotte Street. Christopher Ffye in History of Sierra Leone. “Ann Edmonds who died then, reputed 103, had outlived a vanished world of settlers ascendancy. Her husband David Edmonds had owned much of charlotte street, which she had seen gradually sold-off.” Without a doubt, the achievements of family members and our ability to acquire land and property stems from their decision to be free from the climate of enslavement laws and practices in America and Canada.