The first visit of the Freedom Schooner Amistad to Halifax in summer of 2006 gave our museum an opportunity to display for the first time ever, a rare piece of cloth made by Amistad survivor Sara Margru Kinson. This little girl was only eight years old when she endured a transatlantic slave ship voyage and finally survived the Amistad revolt and subsequent imprisonment. Margru returned to African in 1841 becoming an outstanding student in the mission set up to help Amistad’s survivors. She continued her education in another voyage to the United States attending Oberlin College from 1848 to 1849 and taking the name Sara Margru Kinson. She then returned to Sierra Leone as a teacher.

This piece of cloth is a beautifully dyed blue and white woven cloth which was made by Margru and given as a gift to Eliza Ruggles Raymond, one of the missionaries who helped return the Amistad survivors to Africa in 1841. Eliza later retired to her home in Dempsey Corner in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley taking this keepsake of her African days with her. After her death, her papers were donated to the Nova Scotia Archives  including this piece of cloth included in one of the files. Darlene Brine, a clerk at the archives brought to cloth to my attention two years ago when the Archives decided to transfer its artifacts to the Nova Scotia Museum History Collection.

We assigned Museum textile researcher Kelly Grant to investigate the cloth. Her report found ample family records recording its origins and showed us that it is consistent with African dye and weaving styles. It was probably a piece from a larger garment called a wrapper. There is also an intriguing indication that another child aboard Amistad named Kagne may have also contributed to the cloth. We learned that few textiles from pre-colonial West Africa have survived making this a rare and precious example of West African textile work. The colours of indigo blues pattern are still bright and vibrant today and shows the classic African “tie-dye” patterns which took the world by storm in the 1960s. Margru’s cloth has much to tell us about African creativity, the friendship between two women and the connection between American-Nova Scotia and Africa.

Dan Conlin

Curator of Marine History
Nova Scotia Museum Collections Unit
Maritime Museum of the Atlantic,

1675 Lwr. Water St., Halifax
Nova Scotia B3J 1S3
Canada
ph: 902 424 6442 fax: 902 424 0612

http://maritime.museum.gov.ns.ca
“Canada’s oldest and largest maritime museum.”

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