Anna Maria Falconbridge

While living in Freetown, I became very interested in the dramatic story of the black loyalists who founded the city in 1793. I have told their story in my book entitled From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists after the American Revolution. See the appropriate page on this web site.

Anna Maria Falconbridge’s diary, Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone, fascinated me as well. In many ways her journal is one of the first ethnographies of the Temne people of Sierra Leone. I decided to add the context of her story that she has left out, and to include appropriate segments from other sources—John Clarkson’s diary (he was the first governor of Freetown), Isaac Dubois' diary (whom Anna Maria eventually married)—and pull all the other loose ends together and present them here in lieu of publication.

Her diary is divided into letters written to a supposed friend in Bristol, England.

To read each letter in turn, click on the Letters listed below.