Harper, situated on

Cape Palmas Cape Palmas is a headland on the extreme southeast end of the coast of Liberia, Africa, at the extreme southwest corner of the northern half of the continent. The Cape itself consists of a small, rocky peninsula connected to the mainland by a s ...

, is the capital of

Maryland County Maryland County is a county in the southeastern portion of Liberia. One of 15 counties that comprise the first-level of administrative division in the nation, it has two districts. Harper serves as the capital with the area of the county mea ...

Liberia Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to its north, Ivory Coast to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean ...

. It is a coastal town situated between the Atlantic Ocean and the Hoffman River. Harper is Liberia's 11th largest town, with a population of 17,837.

Name

The town is named after

Robert Goodloe Harper Robert Goodloe Harper (January 1765January 14, 1825), was an American politician and a federalist. He was a member of the United States Senate from Maryland, serving from January 1816 until his resignation in December of the same year. He also ...

, a prominent U.S. politician and member of the

American Colonization Society The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America until 1837, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the migration of freebor ...

. It was he who proposed the name Liberia for the American Colonization Society's settlement in Africa, and the town of Harper was named in honor of him. Harper was the capital of the short-lived

Republic of Maryland The Republic of Maryland (also known variously as the Independent State of Maryland, Maryland-in-Africa, and Maryland in Liberia) was a country in West Africa that existed from 1834 to 1857, when it was merged into what is now Liberia. The area ...

(1834–1857).

Geography

Magnificent unexploited

beaches A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shel ...

stretch for miles on both sides of Harper and warm ocean temperature year round.

Fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

are found in abundance, as well as

whales Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

dolphins A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (t ...

, and large oysters. Fanti canoes sail from Harper to

Monrovia Monrovia () is the capital city of the West African country of Liberia. Founded in 1822, it is located on Cape Mesurado on the Atlantic coast and as of the 2008 census had 1,010,970 residents, home to 29% of Liberia’s total population. As the ...

via Greenville. This trip can take from 3 to 6 days depending on the wind and weather. A

UNMIL The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) was a peacekeeping operation established in September 2003 to monitor a ceasefire agreement in Liberia following the resignation of President Charles Taylor and the conclusion of the Second Liberia ...

ship, the MV ''Catarina,'' sails fortnightly between Harper and Monrovia. From the

Ivory Coast Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital is Yamoussoukro, in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is ...

, Harper is accessible from Tabou. A local landmark is the old mansion of

William Tubman William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman (29 November 1895 – 23 July 1971) was a Liberian politician. He was the 19th president of Liberia and the longest-serving president in the country's history, serving from 1943 Liberian general election, his e ...

, President of Liberia, and the shell of the Morning Star

Masonic Lodge A Masonic lodge, often termed a private lodge or constituent lodge, is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry. It is also commonly used as a term for a building in which such a unit meets. Every new lodge must be warranted or chartered ...

, also built by Tubman.

History

Americo-Liberian period

Harper was the capital of the

, an independent country (1834–1857), the last component of modern Liberia.

, the region of which Harper is the center, is one of the traditional hometowns of the

Americo-Liberians Americo-Liberian people or Congo people or Congau people in Liberian English,Cooper, Helene, ''The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood'' (United States: Simon and Schuster, 2008), p. 6 are a Liberian ethnic group of Afr ...

, descendants of freed

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

s from the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

who settled in Liberia and declared it an independent country in 1847.

John Brown Russwurm John Brown Russwurm (October 1, 1799 – June 9, 1851) was an abolitionist, newspaper publisher, and colonizer of Liberia, where he moved from the United States. He was born in Jamaica to an English father and enslaved mother. As a child he t ...

, an African-American

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

and governor of Monrovia, was buried in Harper after his death. There is a statue to commemorate his grave site. Harper as it existed prior to the Civil Wars was based on the

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

architecture of the

southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

, where many of the Americo-Liberians came from. "Today 016 no place captures the ambiguous world of the Americo-Liberians better than Harper, whose oldest neighborhoods are reminiscent of New Orleans. Once occupied by the ruling elite, houses in the style of plantation mansions now stand silent and ghostly." One of the town's most famous citizens is President

(1895-1971), who was born in Harper. In 2021, his mansion lies in ruins and is occupied by squatters.

Civil War and after

Before the First Liberian Civil War, Harper was an important

administrative centre An administrative center is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune is located. In countries with French as administrative language (such as Belgium, Lu ...

. During the 1970s, Harper was terrorized by

Maryland ritual killings Maryland ritual killings was a series of ritualistic murders that occurred around Harper, Maryland County, Liberia in the 1970s. The crimes have been regarded as "Liberia's most notorious ritual killing case" due to the number of murders, the inv ...

. The crimes have been regarded as "Liberia's most notorious ritual killing case" due to the number of murders, the involvement of high ranking government officials, and their subsequent public executions.

Tubman University William V. S. Tubman University, commonly known as Tubman University, is a public university located in Harper, Maryland County, Liberia. The university is named after William Tubman, the 19th President of Liberia. Founded in 1978 as the Willia ...

, one of only two public universities in Liberia, is located in Harper. Harper is also home to the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Cape Palmas The Diocese of Cape Palmas ( la, Dioecesis Capitis Palmensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in Liberia. Its episcopal see is Cape Palmas. The Diocese of Cape Palmas is a suffragan diocese in the eccl ...

, one of three dioceses of the Catholic Church in Liberia.

References

External links

{{Authority control Populated places established by Americo-Liberians Maryland County Capitals of former nations County capitals in Liberia American colonization movement