An 1850s engraving of the harbor at Monrovia, Liberia, based on a now-lost daguerreotype by Augustus Washington of Connecticut, one of the first Black commercial photographers in America. He was a free man who emigrated to Liberia himself and became a successful sugar cane farmer and Speaker of the Liberian House of Representatives. (Image credit: Smithsonian Institute)
Chronology of Colonization
Under construction
Total of 375 emigrants to Liberia from Lynchburg area.
Virginia passes law that anyone freed from enslavement after 1806 must leave the state or return to slavery.
Lynchburg Colonization Society founded by local enslavers. Most Black people oppose colonization.
First Lynchburg family emigrates to Liberia. Already free, they weren’t sponsored by Lynchburg Colonization Society.
Colonization expands to include enslaved people freed only if they agree to emigrate to Liberia.
Lynchburg Colonization Society dissolves amid growing opposition.Nancy Lynch family, freed by grandson of John Lynch, ask to go to Ohio, coerced to go to Liberia instead.
Liberia becomes sovereign nation with elected legislature.
Washington Copeland, enslaved, convinces 48 people from Lynchburg area to emigrate in small family groups.
Total emigrants sent to Liberia from US since 1822: 10,545. Death rate: 50 percent. Indigenous population: 250,000.
Civil War ends, local whites redouble efforts, sometimes via violence, to oppress Black people, claiming they are not “free men” but only former slaves.
Organizing themselves, 172 people from Lynchburg emigrate to Careysburg, Liberia in one large group.