White Roots: Written and Oral Testimony on the “First” Mr. Rogers

Abstract

Three descent groups in southern Sierra Leone derive their names from Englishmen who married African women in the late seventeenth century: the Caulkers of Shenge, the Tuckers of Gbap, and the Rogerses of Kpaka chiefdom. The names Caulker, Tucker, and Rogers occur frequently in the records of the Royal African Company T70 series and each group retains traditions about its English ancestor. Previous attempts to correlate this written and oral testimony have not been very successful. In this article I shall discuss the Rogerses, dealing first with the written material and then with their oral (or quasi-oral) traditions, which I collected in 1977–78.From the 1620s onwards, a series of English companies had agents in the Sherbro area. The main item purchased was camwood, especially from the Bum Kittam River. Sloops were also sent to Cape Mount to buy ivory and cotton textiles (cloths, shirts and breeches, which were resold at Sherbro and further north). The slave trade was of marginal importance in this area until the mid-eighteenth century.The Royal African Company entered the Sherbro trade in 1678. At first its base was on the mainland, but in 1688 it was transferred to York Island, where a weak stone fort was built. From 1689 to 1700 the company's Sherbro agent controlled trade at Sierra Leone as well as at Sherbro. The Sherbro fort also generally had at least three or four outfactories.