Free Villages - Other Examples of Free Villages

Other Examples of Free Villages

There are many similar Free Villages in the Caribbean established through the work of Nonconformist chapels, particularly in Jamaica. These include:

• Buxton (named after the abolitionist Englishman Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton) finance being raised through the process pioneered by Rev. John Clark's Baptist chapel, with the support of Joseph Sturge.
• Clarksonville (named after the abolitionist Englishman Thomas Clarkson); also arranged through the process pioneered by Rev. John Clark's Baptist chapel.
• Goodwill, on the border of Saint James parish, arranged through Rev. George Blyth, a minister of the Scottish Missionary Society and funded by his congregation. Unusual, in being established subject to a raft of local rules and regulations devised by Blyth, or established with his approval.
• Granville (named after the abolitionist Englishman Granville Sharp), in Trelawny, arranged through Rev. William Knibb's Baptist chapel.
• Kettering, (named after the birthplace of William Knibb).
• Maidstone, arranged through Moravian missionaries where, to this day, some of the inhabitants still bear the family names of the original settlers.
• Sandy Bay, a little seaside village on the way from Lucea to Montego Bay. Founded as a Free Village for emancipated slaves, it was a mid-1830s initiative of the congregation of the Baptist pastor Rev. Thomas Burchell, whose deacon had recently been Sam Sharpe until he died for the cause of abolition and freedom. Today the Free Village's playing field is named 'Burchell Field' after Thomas Burchell.
• Sligoville, the first free village in jamaica
• Sturgeville or Sturge Town, eight miles from Brown's Town and named after the abolitionist Englishman, Joseph Sturge; also arranged as above.
• Trysee (the name is believed to derive from 'try and see'), an early Free Village in the Brown's Town area.

It has been noted (Contested Sites by Pickering and Tyrell, 2004), that although many of the Free Villages were named after someone of widely accepted influence or importance to a conventional British audience, which no doubt helped with raising a proportion of the funds in England, the Jamaican Baptists and Joseph Sturge were Moral Radicals and Nonconformists rather than in the political mainstream.

One village was named after Anne Knight, a female Quaker abolitionist; this is seen by Pickering and Tyrell as "a brave initiative that honoured women in an active, albeit gendered role as reformers at a time when custom frowned on their participation in the public world".

Sadly no Free Villages were named after these emerging African-Caribbean local leaders, although emancipated African-Caribbean men became ordained as deacons in many of the Baptist chapels, conducting the schools and public services in chapels where there was no fully English-trained minister available (as did Henry Beckford at Staceyville before and after his visit to London in 1840).