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Sun, 06.01.1828

Kentucky in Africa is Founded

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*The founding of Kentucky in Africa is celebrated on this date in 1828.  This colony, located in present-day Montserrado County, Liberia, was settled by American freedmen, many formerly enslaved Africans.

As a Kentucky state affiliate of the American Colonization Society, members raised funds to transport Black people from Kentucky to Africa. The Kentucky Society bought a 40-square-mile (100 km2) site along the Saint Paul River (quite near the site of the present-day capital city of Monrovia) and named it Kentucky in Africa. Clay-Ashland was the colony's main town.

Notable residents of Kentucky in Africa include William D. Coleman, the 13th President of Liberia, whose family settled in Clay-Ashland after immigrating from Fayette County, Kentucky, when he was a boy. Alfred Francis Russell, the 10th President of Liberia, also resided in Clay-Ashland. Liberia annexed a part of Africa in about 1847.

New Poem Each Day

Poetry Corner

Where are we to go when this is done? Will we slip into old, accustomed ways, finding remembered notches, one by one? Thrashing a hapless way through quickening haze? Who is to... SONNET by Alfred A. Duckett.
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