The Life of Boston King

Carmelita A M Robertson, Ruth Holmes Whitehead,

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ISBN: 9781551094519

The Life of Boston King

  Author:   Carmelita A M Robertson, Ruth Holmes Whitehead,  
  Publisher:  Nimbus Publishing Limited

Back in Print!

In the summer of 1783, at the end of the American Revolution, several thousand Black men, women and children left New York City with the British Army, bound by ship for Nova Scotia. Now uniformly called “Black Loyalists”, regardless of their status at leaving New York, theirs is a rich and fascinating history. One of the most well-documented of these Black Loyalists was a man named Boston King, born a slave to Richard Waring, a rice-planter in South Carolina.

King experienced a religious revelation while in Nova Scotia, and became a Methodist preacher; he went to Sierra Leone in 1792 to spread the Gospel; and from there was invited to England to study at a Methodist school. While there, he wrote the story of his life and conversion. This was published in the Methodist Magazine of the times.

Thus survived one of only three autobiographies of a Black Loyalist, full of details of the Loyalist settlement of Nova Scotia. It is reprinted here as “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher,” edited by Ruth Holmes Whitehead and Carmelita Robertson. An introduction by Ruth Holmes Whitehead presents new research findings about King’s life, and her Afterword examines particularly his life as a slave on the Waring Plantation, near Charleston, SC. Whitehead and Robertson revisited the ruins of two Waring plantations, where King would have worked as a child and young man, and photographed the dirt road, still running through one plantation, down which he would have ridden away to freedom.

Details and Specs
ISBN associated with this title: 9781551094519
Item NB0561
PublisherNimbus Publishing Limited
PublisherNimbus Publishing Limited
Published on January 2 2003
Language eng
Pages 64
Format Paperback
Dimensions8.5(in) x 6(in)
Shipping weight115(g)
Status ACTIVE TITLE
Ruth Holmes Whitehead is a renowned Mi'kmaw historian and ethnologist. She has worked with the Nova Scotia Museum for over forty years, first as assistant curator in history and now as research associate. She is the author of several books, including Six Mi’kmaq Stories and The Old Man Told Us. She lives in Halifax.