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Mississippi-in-Africa was a colony on the
Mississippi-in-Africa was a colony on the Pepper Coast
The Pepper Coast or Grain Coast was a coastal area of western Africa, between Cape Mesurado and Cape Palmas. It encloses the present republic of Liberia. The name was given by European traders.
Origin of the name
The Pepper Coast got its name f ...
(West Africa) founded in the 1830s by the Mississippi Colonization Society of the United States and settled by American free people of color
In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color (French: ''gens de couleur libres''; Spanish: ''gente de color libre'') were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not ...
, many of them former slaves. In the late 1840s, some 300 former slaves from Prospect Hill Plantation
The Prospect Hill Plantation was a former 5,000-acre plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi. In the early 19th century, the plantation was owned by planter Isaac Ross of South Carolina, who enslaved African American people to farm cotton as a ...
and other Isaac Ross
Isaac Beattie Ross (born 27 October 1984) is a New Zealand rugby union player. He plays in the lock position for the Austin Gilgronis of Major League Rugby (MLR) competition.
Professional career
Ross is of Māori descent, and played for New ...
properties in Jefferson County, Mississippi
Jefferson County is a County (United States), county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi; its western border is formed by the Mississippi River. As of the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census, the population was 7,726, making it the third ...
, were the largest single group of emigrants to the new colony. Ross had freed the slaves in his will and provided for his plantation to be sold to pay for their transportation and initial costs.
These freedmen
A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), abolitionism, emancipation (gra ...
and other American immigrants to the colony and its neighbors, 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 ...
(which annexed Mississippi-in-Africa in 1842) and