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Lott Cary: Man of Purchased Freedom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
The American Colonization Society was organized in 1816 for the purpose of colonizing the free Negroes of the United States. After a series of difficulties, the society, in 1821, sent to Liberia Lott Cary who provided leadership and direction in this colony until his premature death in 1828. Advocates of African colonization were motivated by various and sometimes divergent ideals. One was the belief that colonization of the American free Negro in Africa would be a means of spreading Christianity and civilization to that continent. Although Cary was not always enthusiastic about the American Colonization Society and its policies, it never sent anyone to Liberia who more nearly fulfilled this ideal. By the time of his death the Liberian colony was firmly planted.
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1970
References
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24. I have heard this many times in Liberia. For example, in an interview with a former president of the Republic, the Hon. C. D. B. King, in Brewerville, Liberia (April 1961) President King told me that the church was “born in the midst of the Atlantic.” President King was a Sierra Leonian who moved to Liberia. He had a delightful store of historical knowledge.
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61. In 1962 I visited a small Baptist church near Monrovia which still went by the name Oldest Congo Town Baptist Church. I was unable to ascertain the date of establishment, but believe it to be later than the time of Lott Cary.
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64. Ibid. His name has been enshrined in the Liberian town of Carysburg. (This town is about twenty-eight miles from Monrovia.) The Lott Carey (sic) Baptist Foreign Missionary Convention, an American Negro organization, maintains a school and mission station at Brewerville, Liberia.