Epilogue

In the years following John Marrant’s death, broadsides advertising a “Free Settlement on the Coast of Africa” circulated throughout Nova Scotia’s Black settlements. Cato Perkins, who had escaped from Virginia and had been installed as Marrant’s successor to lead the Huntingdon congregation, joined several prominent church leaders to hear John Clarkson present the Sierra Leone Company’s proposal. Church membership and family relations factored prominently in the decisions of the nearly twelve hundred emigrants. However, when they arrived in Sierra Leone, the hardships they encountered echoed familiar patterns from their experiences in Nova Scotia. Encumbered with untenable land, hostile indigenous inhabitants, and paternalistic attitudes on the part of the Sierra Leone Company, the Black Nova Scotians fortified themselves: their political leadership generally rested on the shoulders of church ministers. While Black Nova Scotian settlers implemented a radical democracy, religion remained “the foundation of their society, and its most distinctive trait.”