Aberdeen is a location in Jamaica getting its name from the Aberdeen Estate. It is in Saint Elizabeth Parish.
History
The Aberdeen Estate was originally leased by Alexander Forbes from Alexander MacFarlane from 1736 to 1755. Forbes was the white superintendent of the Jamaican Maroons town of Accompong from 1773 until the end of the century.
By 1772, Forbes owned the estate outright, and he built a Great house around the 1740s. The enslaved Africans on the estate became Moravians following the missionary work by this Protestant group. Following emancipation these people moved off the estate and established the modern settlement of Aberdeen, retaining their links to the Moravian church.
Aberdeen lies on the edge of Cockpit Country. In the first half of the 1800s, runaway slaves created the community of Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come on the land of Aberdeen in the Cockpit Country.
References
- ^ Collier, Gordon; Fleischmann, Ulrich (2003). A Pepper-pot of Cultures: Aspects of Creolization in the Caribbean. Rodop. pp. 179–180.
- Michael Siva, After the Treaties: A Social, Economic and Demographic History of Maroon Society in Jamaica, 1739-1842, PhD Dissertation (Southampton: Southampton University, 2018), p. 276.
- "Aberdeen". Cockpit Country!. Windsor Research Centre. Retrieved 6 October 2015.
- "Scotland, Africa and Slavery in the Caribbean". A North East Story. University of Aberdeen. Retrieved 6 October 2015.