Sligoville (formerly known as Highgate) is a small community approximately 10 miles from

Spanish Town Spanish Town (Jamaican Patois: Spain) is the capital and the largest town in the Parishes of Jamaica, parish of St. Catherine, Jamaica, St. Catherine in the historic county of Middlesex, Jamaica, Middlesex, Jamaica. It was the Spanish and Briti ...

in the parish of St. Catherine on the island of

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

History

On 10 July 1835, Reverend

James Phillippo James Phillippo (1798 in Norfolk, England – 11 May 1879, in Spanish Town, Jamaica) was an English Baptist missionary in Jamaica who campaigned for the abolition of slavery. He served in Jamaica from 1823 to his death, with some periods lobbyin ...

, an English Baptist minister and anti-slavery activist stationed in Spanish Town, purchased of land for £100 and established the first "free village" in the West Indies. The land was subsequently divided into quarter-acre lots which the freed slaves could purchase for £3 each. The first former slave to purchase land in Sligoville was former Hampstead Estate headman Henry Lunan. What became known as the " Free Village" system resulted from this first settlement, and similar villages were established throughout the island, most of them by ministers of religion, who supplied land to the ex-slaves who had never owned land before. Originally named Highgate, the village was renamed as Sligoville (after Howe Browne, Marquess of Sligo and

Governor of Jamaica This is a list of viceroys in Jamaica from its initial occupation by Spain in 1509, to its independence from the United Kingdom in 1962. For a list of viceroys after independence, see Governor-General of Jamaica. For context, see History of Jama ...

in 1834, the year that freedom came to the enslaved people of Jamaica) on 12 June 1840. Phillippo later established a church and school in Sligoville. The ruins of the Highgate House, which was the residence of several British governors, can still be viewed in Sligoville today, along with the private chapel St. John's Anglican Church that John Augustus O'Sullivan founded in 1840 and the Sligoville Great House, also built by O'Sullivan. The Sligoville Heritage Foundation Benevolent Society, founded by direct descendants of Jamaican slaves, co-organises the annual Sligoville Emanci-Fest with the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission. Site of Pinnacle, the first Rastafarian village in Jamaica (founded 1940, demolished 1958), see

Leonard Howell Leonard Percival Howell (16 June 1898 – 23 January 1981), also known as The Gong or G. G. Maragh (for ''Gangun Guru''), was a Jamaican religious figure. According to his biographer Hélène Lee, Howell was born into an Anglican family. He was o ...

for details.

Notable people

* Shirley Anne Tate (born March 1956) Jamaican sociologist, scholar, researcher, educator, and

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

; raised in Sligoville.

References

{{Settlements in Jamaica Populated places in Jamaica Populated places established in 1835