Cape Palmas,

Maryland Colony

Map of

Liberia

c1825

  click on image for larger view

  John Russwurm went to Monrovia in

  1829, sent out by the American

  Colonization Society as Superintendent

  of Public Schools and as their Secretary in the colony. From his earliest days in West Africa he set himself to learn the languages of the local peoples. A few months after he arrived he founded the Liberia Herald, which he edited for about five years. The paper covered all aspects of life in the colony, and encouraged progress in education especially. Exposure of the continuing slave trade along the coast was one of its chief concerns.

In 1833 he married Sarah McGill, daughter of the Lieutenant- Governor of Monrovia; they had four children, a daughter and three sons.

At this time Liberia did not exist as a unified entity, rather there were separate 'colonies' along the coast. In 1834 the Maryland Colony was established, after rather unsatisfactory negotiations with the local tribal leader, each side apparently seriously misunderstanding the other's intentions. The small group of African-American settlers laid out a port, and allotted small-holdings for farming, where vegetables, livestock, and coffee were produced. Over the next two decades about 1000 new colonists arrived under the sponsorship of the Maryland Colonization Society. They made their livelihoods from farming, small-scale trading and at sea; they established churches and schools, a library, mutual aid societies and a militia, reproducing the type of community they had known in America.

John Russwurm was appointed Governor of Maryland in Liberia in 1836, and held that office until his death in 1851. During that time colony grew and remained mostly very stable, with few instances of friction within it, or with the neighbouring indigenous people. Only after his death did difficulties develop, leading first to Maryland declaring its independence, and then, after futile conflict with its African neighbours, being incorporated into the Republic of Liberia which had been inaugurated in 1847.

After his death in 1851 a memorial was raised to him at Cape Palmas, where he had carried through his intention to help establish a place in Africa in which African-Americans could find their own destiny, away from the domination of White America.

In 1850, however, he had visited America for the last time, taking two of his sons, George and Francis, to be enrolled at North Yarmouth Academy, in Maine, and to live with their step-grandmother, Susan Hawes, indicating perhaps his own close relationship with his White step-family.

Views of Cape Palmas