Influence of Nova Scotia immigrants still felt in Sierra Leone community they founded.
Wayn Hamilton, of Dartmouth, displays photos from the time he spent in Sierra Leone meeting families of Nova Scotia Loyalist descent living in the west African nation. (TED PRITCHARD / Staff)
In 1990, Wayn Hamilton received a letter at his home in Halifax from a researcher at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone.
The researcher, who was studying the history of Black Nova Scotians, told Wayn he may have a living relative in Freetown, the capital city of this small West African country.
This relative is Plummer Hamilton, whose ancestors were called the Nova Scotia Settlers, a group of people who emigrated from Canada to what is now Sierra Leone 220 years ago.
The Nova Scotia Settlers were former slaves who escaped from plantations in the southern United States. They were then recruited as soldiers by the British to fight in the American War of Independence. In exchange for their service they were promised citizenship, land rights and freedom. When the war was lost they came to Nova Scotia, where some, including Wayn’s family, stayed to form what are now the country’s oldest African- Canadian communities. Others felt unwelcome in Canada, and chose to return to the continent from which they or their ancestors were forcefully taken.
“With the list of the slaves that left and the list of slaves that returned, there was one missing," said Plummer Hamilton.
“We assumed straight away that the brother that didn’t come back is the greatgrandfather of Wayn."
This wouldn’t be his great-grandfather in the sense that it was the father of Wayn’s grandfather, but a more distant relative, something like a great-greatgreat- great- grandfather.
“We knew we had connections, but they were loose connections and we were not able to trace them," said Plummer Hamilton. “We knew some of our greatgrandparents were taken as slaves. Some returned and some did not."
Wayn Hamilton wrote to Plummer, and first visited Sierra Leone in 1992 for the country’s bicentenary celebrations. A year later he moved to Freetown to work for an international development organization. It was then he established a family relationship that has lasted for 20 ye a rs.
“People have to realize that our family lineage was broken during the enslavement period, and it’s important that we reconnect and that we don’t lose sight of the memory of who we were as a people before we were fractured by the slave trade," said Wayn Hamilton.
The legacy of the Nova Scotia Settlers is at risk of fading in today’s Sierra Leone, but there are still those, like Wayn and Plummer Hamilton, who are trying to keep the bond alive.
In January 1792, 15 ships left Halifax carrying about 1,200 passengers. In March, they arrived on the shores of the West African colony owned by a British philanthropic organization called the Sierra Leone Company. The Nova Scotia Settlers built houses, established churches, started families and founded the city of Freetown.
The Settlers would make up part of an ethnic group known as the Krios. Though the Nova Scotians came first, Krios also includes those who arrived later: the Maroons, who were taken directly from the Caribbean, and resettled Africans, who were released from slave ships captured on the high seas before setting foot in the Americas. It was, however, the values brought by the Nova Scotians that would set the dominant tone of the emergent Krio society.
“I think we owe the success of this settlement to the Nova Scotians. Because of their background of having gone through so many trials and tribulations, they had the temperament to make a success of the settlement to which they had been sent," said Cassandra Garber, president of an organization called the Krio Descendants Union (spelled Yunion in the Krio language).
“Living as free families was a great achievement for them. They brought with them the good side of what they had learned living in the Western world and developed that as a culture."
In today’s Sierra Leone, those who descended from the Nova Scotia Settlers are a small minority in relation to the country’s indigenous population. In fact, as only about half the original Settlers survived those first hard years establishing the new colony; there are very few who can say with certainty that their ancestors are among those who arrived 220 years ago.
One of the surviving aspects of the Nova Scotia Settlers’ legacy is that they were largely responsible for bringing Christianity to Sierra Leone.Among the first churches to be established was the Zion Methodist Chapel, created the same month as the Settlers’ arrival in 1792. The church was founded as an obscure evangelical denomination called the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion, brought from a congregation in Birchtown, N.S., and existed only in England, Canada and Sierra Leone. The denomination was created in 1784, just eight years before arriving in Freetown.
Though the chapel is located in the heart of Freetown’s downtown commercial centre, the number of regular worshippers has been declining. Looking out at an average Sunday church service, the disproportionate number of heads with greying hair suggests many of today’s members of Zion Methodist are elderly.
On March 4, Zion Methodist held a special service to commemorate their 220th anniversary. Like every Sunday, hymns were sung, sermons were delivered, and Communion was celebrated. But unlike most Sundays, the church was filled with worshippers, commemorating this historic event in Sierra Leone’s history.
“I think if those who arrived 220 years ago were here today, they would be very pleased by what they see," said Rev. Salieu Kamara, chairman of the Countess of Huntingdon Connexion in Sierra Leone, during his sermon. “You might have gone through a lot of difficulties, yet you have gathered yourselves and set this day apart for celebration."
This service is part of a series of events hosted by Zion Methodist that attempt to rekindle the public’s interest in this old Settler church, and plan a way forward that will ensure the congregation’s survival into the future.
Wayn Hamilton is trying to revive an awareness of this shared history by connecting church congregations in Nova Scotia with those in Sierra Leone through his work as CEO of the Office for African-Nova Scotian Affairs. He says this is part of a larger effort to act as a facilitator between black Nova Scotians and those in the diaspora from other parts of Canada, the United States, or West Africa. In the next two years he says he will be working to establish an interpretive centre for Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia, which will involve forming a stronger relationship with Krios in Sierra Leone.
Wayn and Plummer Hamilton cannot say for sure who is their shared ancestor. This is due in part to the fact that for a long time Africans in the Americas were not provided with official documents that would help identify family lineage. To compound this problem, many of the already sparse records kept of the Settlers’ history were destroyed during Sierra Leone’s 11-year civil war, which began soon after Wayn and Plummer met.
“We can only go back so far in the records, but in Nova Scotia there are actually two Hamiltons who left Nova Scotia on Plummer’s side; though this is a bit of an extrapolation of history," said Wayn Hamilton. “One of the challenges has to do with identifying that family line to determine whether there are genealogy records or birth records, but it’s hard because a lot of it is spotty due to a lack of continuous recording of who were in the family lines."
To Wayn and Plummer, the bond formed between the two families is more important than the details of how they are related. Both say they won’t let this relationship fade any time soon.
“He knows he’s always welcome," said Plummer Hamilton. “It’s been a fulfilling episode in our lives meeting Wayn and other members of the family. He is one of us."
Wayn’s most recent visit to Freetown was in 2011, when he brought his son to Sierra Leone for the first time. As far as Wayn is concerned, Plummer is his uncle, and Sierra Leone is his second home.
“There’s this idea that we’re a family that has only been separated by water and through time," said Wayn Hamilton.
“We’ve bonded with each other as if we are long-lost relatives."
Damon van der Linde is a Canadian journalist living in Sierra Leone.
The researcher, who was studying the history of Black Nova Scotians, told Wayn he may have a living relative in Freetown, the capital city of this small West African country.
This relative is Plummer Hamilton, whose ancestors were called the Nova Scotia Settlers, a group of people who emigrated from Canada to what is now Sierra Leone 220 years ago.
The Nova Scotia Settlers were former slaves who escaped from plantations in the southern United States. They were then recruited as soldiers by the British to fight in the American War of Independence. In exchange for their service they were promised citizenship, land rights and freedom. When the war was lost they came to Nova Scotia, where some, including Wayn’s family, stayed to form what are now the country’s oldest African- Canadian communities. Others felt unwelcome in Canada, and chose to return to the continent from which they or their ancestors were forcefully taken.
“With the list of the slaves that left and the list of slaves that returned, there was one missing," said Plummer Hamilton.
“We assumed straight away that the brother that didn’t come back is the greatgrandfather of Wayn."
This wouldn’t be his great-grandfather in the sense that it was the father of Wayn’s grandfather, but a more distant relative, something like a great-greatgreat- great- grandfather.
“We knew we had connections, but they were loose connections and we were not able to trace them," said Plummer Hamilton. “We knew some of our greatgrandparents were taken as slaves. Some returned and some did not."
Wayn Hamilton wrote to Plummer, and first visited Sierra Leone in 1992 for the country’s bicentenary celebrations. A year later he moved to Freetown to work for an international development organization. It was then he established a family relationship that has lasted for 20 ye a rs.
“People have to realize that our family lineage was broken during the enslavement period, and it’s important that we reconnect and that we don’t lose sight of the memory of who we were as a people before we were fractured by the slave trade," said Wayn Hamilton.
The legacy of the Nova Scotia Settlers is at risk of fading in today’s Sierra Leone, but there are still those, like Wayn and Plummer Hamilton, who are trying to keep the bond alive.
In January 1792, 15 ships left Halifax carrying about 1,200 passengers. In March, they arrived on the shores of the West African colony owned by a British philanthropic organization called the Sierra Leone Company. The Nova Scotia Settlers built houses, established churches, started families and founded the city of Freetown.
The Settlers would make up part of an ethnic group known as the Krios. Though the Nova Scotians came first, Krios also includes those who arrived later: the Maroons, who were taken directly from the Caribbean, and resettled Africans, who were released from slave ships captured on the high seas before setting foot in the Americas. It was, however, the values brought by the Nova Scotians that would set the dominant tone of the emergent Krio society.
“I think we owe the success of this settlement to the Nova Scotians. Because of their background of having gone through so many trials and tribulations, they had the temperament to make a success of the settlement to which they had been sent," said Cassandra Garber, president of an organization called the Krio Descendants Union (spelled Yunion in the Krio language).
“Living as free families was a great achievement for them. They brought with them the good side of what they had learned living in the Western world and developed that as a culture."
In today’s Sierra Leone, those who descended from the Nova Scotia Settlers are a small minority in relation to the country’s indigenous population. In fact, as only about half the original Settlers survived those first hard years establishing the new colony; there are very few who can say with certainty that their ancestors are among those who arrived 220 years ago.
One of the surviving aspects of the Nova Scotia Settlers’ legacy is that they were largely responsible for bringing Christianity to Sierra Leone.Among the first churches to be established was the Zion Methodist Chapel, created the same month as the Settlers’ arrival in 1792. The church was founded as an obscure evangelical denomination called the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion, brought from a congregation in Birchtown, N.S., and existed only in England, Canada and Sierra Leone. The denomination was created in 1784, just eight years before arriving in Freetown.
Though the chapel is located in the heart of Freetown’s downtown commercial centre, the number of regular worshippers has been declining. Looking out at an average Sunday church service, the disproportionate number of heads with greying hair suggests many of today’s members of Zion Methodist are elderly.
On March 4, Zion Methodist held a special service to commemorate their 220th anniversary. Like every Sunday, hymns were sung, sermons were delivered, and Communion was celebrated. But unlike most Sundays, the church was filled with worshippers, commemorating this historic event in Sierra Leone’s history.
“I think if those who arrived 220 years ago were here today, they would be very pleased by what they see," said Rev. Salieu Kamara, chairman of the Countess of Huntingdon Connexion in Sierra Leone, during his sermon. “You might have gone through a lot of difficulties, yet you have gathered yourselves and set this day apart for celebration."
This service is part of a series of events hosted by Zion Methodist that attempt to rekindle the public’s interest in this old Settler church, and plan a way forward that will ensure the congregation’s survival into the future.
Wayn Hamilton is trying to revive an awareness of this shared history by connecting church congregations in Nova Scotia with those in Sierra Leone through his work as CEO of the Office for African-Nova Scotian Affairs. He says this is part of a larger effort to act as a facilitator between black Nova Scotians and those in the diaspora from other parts of Canada, the United States, or West Africa. In the next two years he says he will be working to establish an interpretive centre for Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia, which will involve forming a stronger relationship with Krios in Sierra Leone.
Wayn and Plummer Hamilton cannot say for sure who is their shared ancestor. This is due in part to the fact that for a long time Africans in the Americas were not provided with official documents that would help identify family lineage. To compound this problem, many of the already sparse records kept of the Settlers’ history were destroyed during Sierra Leone’s 11-year civil war, which began soon after Wayn and Plummer met.
“We can only go back so far in the records, but in Nova Scotia there are actually two Hamiltons who left Nova Scotia on Plummer’s side; though this is a bit of an extrapolation of history," said Wayn Hamilton. “One of the challenges has to do with identifying that family line to determine whether there are genealogy records or birth records, but it’s hard because a lot of it is spotty due to a lack of continuous recording of who were in the family lines."
To Wayn and Plummer, the bond formed between the two families is more important than the details of how they are related. Both say they won’t let this relationship fade any time soon.
“He knows he’s always welcome," said Plummer Hamilton. “It’s been a fulfilling episode in our lives meeting Wayn and other members of the family. He is one of us."
Wayn’s most recent visit to Freetown was in 2011, when he brought his son to Sierra Leone for the first time. As far as Wayn is concerned, Plummer is his uncle, and Sierra Leone is his second home.
“There’s this idea that we’re a family that has only been separated by water and through time," said Wayn Hamilton.
“We’ve bonded with each other as if we are long-lost relatives."
Damon van der Linde is a Canadian journalist living in Sierra Leone.
