ROGERS, ZACHARY
- 2 Min Read
Zachary Rogers (16?-1681), an Englishman in the service of the Gambia Adventurers Company, founded a family line that has been prominent in the Sierra Leone region for more than 300 years.
In 1668, Rogers was appointed chief agent of the company in the Sherbro country of Sierra Leone. He retained the post when the Royal African Company took over the trade in 1672, and held it until his death. His widow then quarreled with the company’s officials who maintained that she was withholding property from them.
According to tradition she was Jafua-Lue, a member of the Massaquoi family of the Gallinas country, at the southern end of the Sierra Leone coastline, living at Dumagbe — though tradition confusingly records her husband’s name as Charles, not Zachary. It is said that one of their family was seen sitting on a chair (a rarity in those days) and was given the name “kpaka” (chair) which the Rogers family have since retained.
Zachary and his wife had at least two sons, Zachary and Samuel, who entered the Royal African Company’s service in the 1690s, but subsequently moved to their home in the Gallinas country where they traded on their own in rivalry with the company.
Their family became rich and powerful, second only in the area to the ruling Massaquoi family. Some of them lived in European style. Samuel Siaka Rogers, who at the end of the 18th century traded for about 20 years in the rivers north of Sierra Leone, spoke good English, and used to sleep under a mosquito net. In a later generation, James Western Rogers of Jidaro, Gallinas country, used to eat off silver plates.
The great prosperity of the Rogers family came to an end in 1850, when British naval officers persuaded them to make a treaty renouncing the slave trade which had brought them their wealth. Nevertheless they remained, and still remain, an important family in the country.
CHRISTOPHER FYFE
