James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, from A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince, as related by Himself [1770]

Ukawsaw Gronniosaw was born in the city of Borno, in the north of what is now Nigeria. Taken from his homeland when he was fifteen, he was bought by a Dutchman in Barbadoes, and taken to New England. There he was bought by a pastor, Mr Freedlandhouse, in New York, who was a friend to the famous Methodist evangelist George Whitefield. It is at this point that Gronniosaw experienced his religious awakening. Although he was freed by Freedlandhouse, he continued to serve several masters, until he was commandeered by an officer to serve in the British armed forces against the French during the Seven Years War. After service he was discharged and made his way to England where he took the name James Albert and married a weaver called Betty. The Narrative ends with a moving account of his family’s painful destitution under the trials of irregular employment (he was a navvy and carpenter at times) and the vagaries of human charity. Gronniosaw’s Narrative was dictated to a lady of Leominster when he was 60 and is only the second published slave narrative. As Louis Gates has pointed out, it is the first with the ‘trope of the Talking Book’, and this encounter with Western knowledge is recounted in the first extract.1 In the second extract, the England of his imagination is tested when he encounters the reality.2