Harry Washington

Harry Washington (c. 1740–1800) was a Black Loyalist in the American Revolutionary War, enslaved for a time by Virginia planter George Washington, later the first President of the United States. After the British lost the war, he was evacuated to Nova Scotia. In 1792 he joined nearly 1,200 freedmen for resettlement in Sierra Leone, where they set up a colony of free people of color. Harry had been born in what is now Gambia and sold into slavery as a war captive. He was purchased by George Washington, who had plantations in Virginia. During the American Revolutionary War, Harry Washington escaped from slavery in Virginia and served as a corporal in the Black Pioneers attached to a British artillery unit. After the war he was among Black Loyalists resettled by the British in Nova Scotia, where they were granted land. There Washington married Jenny, another freed American slave. In 1792 the couple were among more than 1,000 freedmen chosen to migrate to Sierra Leone, West Africa, where the British had established a new colony of people of African descent. In 1800 Washington joined a rebellion against the British colonial authorities in the Sierra Leone Colony. He was exiled to the Bullom Shore, where he subsequently died.