THE MERIKENS:

FREE BLACK AMERICAN SETTLERS IN TRINIDAD 1815-16

by John McNish Weiss

Second edition, revised and enlarged

Published by McNish & Weiss, London

ISBN 0 9526460 5 6

On 20 August 1816, a group of African Americans who had previously been slaves in the United States became the founders of The Company Villages in the south of Trinidad. They were proud of being American, and were known from then as The Merikens, as spoken locally. The community maintains its identity today, celebrating its origins once a year and remembering their ancestors who fought for the British in the War of 1812 as the Corps of Colonial Marines. These Black Freedom Fighters who, when the British invaded the Atlantic coast of the US, took their liberty into their own hands and bore arms against their ex-masters are virtually ignored in American history, both Black and White, but their story is being explored and brought out into the open by John McNish Weiss. In 1995 he presented to the annual gathering of descendants the first edition of this publication, displaying for the first time the names of all the first settlers, with a brief history of the events which led them to Trinidad. In succeeding years, he has broadcast their story to international conferences of historians in the US, the UK and Germany.

With the original 1995 booklet completely out of print, following sales in Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom and the United States as well as orders from around the world, in 2002 a new edition had been long requested. During the years since the first edition appeared, the author and his wife, Trinidadian Althea McNish Weiss, had mined the US National Archives in Maryland and the UK National Archives in the Public Record Office at Kew for new information on the settlers’ American origins and their flight from slavery, and found signs of the settlers also in the Registry archives of Trinidad and Tobago in Port of Spain. Revised lists now gave a greatly enhanced picture of many of the settlers’ origins and lives, and the historical outline was extensively re-written. Out of print for a few years, the 2002 edition is now reprinted. With every new line of research, more work lies to be done on the main book on the Colonial Marines and their lives that has been over a decade in preparation. This booklet gives just a taste of what is to come.

The excerpt below shows the scope of information on the settlers, to the extent revealed for each by research so far: origins, consisting of US state, county, locality, name of slave-holder and farm, vocation on the farm, date of escape to the British; for Colonial Marines, date of enlistment and details of rank and promotion; birth, life and family, from US files and Trinidad reports and registry details; and, as well as it can be discerned or guessed, the location of the land-grant as noted in 1847 or later.

EXCERPT from entries of settlers of the 4th Co. of Colonial Marines, seven of whom, including the McNish group, later moved to lands of the 5th Co.: