Nova Scotian Settlers

Historical ethnic group that settled Sierra Leone The gravestone of Lawrence Hartshorne, a Quaker who was the chief assistant of John Clarkson. The Nova Scotian Settlers, or Sierra Leone Settlers (also known as the Nova Scotians or more commonly as the Settlers), were African Americans and Black Canadians of Black American descent who founded the settlement of Freetown, Sierra Leone and the Colony of Sierra Leone, on March 11, 1792. The majority of these British loyalist immigrants were among 3,000 people, mostly former slaves, who had sought freedom and refuge with the British during the American Revolutionary War, leaving rebel masters. They became known as the Black Loyalists. The Nova Scotian Settlers were jointly led by Thomas Peters, a former soldier, and English abolitionist John Clarkson. For most of the 19th century, the Settlers resided in Settler Town and remained a distinct ethnic group within the Freetown territory, tending to marry among themselves and with Europeans in the colony. The Settler descendants gradually developed as an ethnicity known as the Sierra Leone Creole people. Loan words in the Krio language and the "bod oses" of their modern-day descendants are s