JISCMail - BASA Archives

> >In Victorian Britain were five educated, attractive and accomplished
> >ladies. They were Elizabeth, Hannah, Emma, Adelaide and Annette Smith. All
> >born in Freetown between 1860-1870, they were the daughters of the half
> >English and half Fante Civil Servant, William Smith Jnr of Freetown. Their
> >mother was the Creole and Bambara heiress Mrs Anne Smith a member of the
> >Spilsbury mercantile family of Freetown.
> >
> >The Smith sisters were brought up on the Isle of Jersey in the Channel
> >Islands with their brothers Dr Joseph Smith and their photographer brother
> >Thomas Smith. The Smith sisters however also spent a large portion of their
> >lives in Hammersmith, West London and also West Africa having married
> >successful and influential men from along the coast of West Africa.
> >
> >Elizabeth married Dr William Jarvis Awooner Renner, Assistant Colonial
> >Surgeon who later became the Mayor of Freetown. Hannah married his brother
> >the barrister Peter Awooner Renner who later became ADC to the Governor of
> >the Gold Coast. Adelaide married the Gold Coast nationalist lawyer and
> >writer Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford. Annette known to all as Nettie
> >married Dr John Farrell Easmon who became Chief Medical Officer of the Gold
> >Coast. Emma however became the maiden aunt of the family.
> >
> >Topics covered in relation to the Smith's will include the system of
> >warding in West Africa, the system of the extended family in West Africa
> >and Britain. Education for women in Sierra Leone in its early history.
> >Comparisons will be made with other heroines in African and British culture
> >and literature.
> >
> >Come and hear about their remarkable and incredible lives, their
> >contribution towards education, music and public life in general and how
> >one of the sisters brought up her son to challenge racial discrimination
> >within the West African Colonial medical Service and how such
> >discrimination contributed to the fight for independence. Hear how one of
> >them showed the formidable traits of their great-grandmother the merchant
> >women Betsy Carew. Hear of how they coped with their Creole, Bambara,
> >English and Fante identity. Furthemore, the talk will cover their
> >friendship with the composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor the composer of
> >Hiawatha, a fellow Creole and another Creole, Queen Victoria's Goddaughter
> >the Nigerian, Victoria Davies later Mrs Randle.
> >
> >As the Smith sisters were children from William Smith Jnr's second wife,
> >the Smith sisters had half brothers and sisters from his marriage to his
> >first wife another half-caste woman Charlotte Macauley, the daughter of the
> >British Governor of Sierra Leone and a recaptive girl. The older Smith
> >siblings who were no less accomplished and also great achievers were Dr
> >William Henry Smith, Dr Robert Smith, Judge Francis Smith of the Gambia,
> >Mrs Mary Broughton Davies wife of Dr William Broughton Davies, Mrs Phillipa
> >Spilsbury wife of Dr Thomas Spilsbury who married a relative of her
> >Step-mother, Anne. Hear about the Smith family in General and their
> >Diaspora along the West Coast of Africa and why one historian described
> >William Smith Jnr as '"the father of as remarkable a family as this colony
> >has ever known'"
> >
> >Amongst the many descendants, in-laws and extended family of the Smith
> >Sisters are the late Dr M C F Easmon, the Awooner Renners, Hunters, the
> >Wright family. (Three members of the Smith family married into the Wright
> >family). Also the Clintons, Kponous, the Dillons, Mccarthurs were also
> >related to them by marriage.
> >
> >Tickets are £3.00; teenager £1.50 Free to children under 13. TEL 0208 344
> >7783 or 07986 807 257.
> >The nearest Tube Stations are Hammersmith or Ravenscourt Park.
>