Elizabeth Frazer Skelton

Elizabeth Frazer Skelton (1800–1855) also called "Mammy Skelton" was a Euro-African slave trader.^[1]

Life[]

She was the daughter of the Afro-American John Frazer (d. 1813), who had been banished from Liberia as a slave owner, and an African woman. Her father had emigrated to Liberia in 1797, but was banished because he engaged in slavery.

Elizabeth married the Anglo-African William Skelton Jr. of Kissing, who founded the famous trading house of Skelton. She and her spouse founded the slave fort Victoria at the river Rio Nunez in 1825/26, which they managed together. ^[2] Their trading post Victoria functioned as the conduit for slaves transported by canoe or overland to Portuguese Bissau.^[3] They were the business associates of Elizabeth's sister and brother-in-law, Mary Ann Frazer and the Afro-American slave trader Thomas Gaffery Curtis of Fallangia. ^[4]

When she was widowed, she managed the business of her late spouse herself. At that time, the slave trade was banned by the British and United States, but continued in practice. She has a powerful position as a dominant figure in the regional business community, and was for a time responsible for half of the export of the region.

In about 1840, under the pressure of the British West Africa Squadron and the Blockade of Africa, the slave traders of the region gradually shifted to growing peanuts with slave labour, an industry in which she also became one of the leading figures.

See also[]

• Signares, female slave traders in colonial West Africa

References[]

• The Slave Trade
• The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective
• Reclaiming the Women of Britain's First Mission to West Africa: Three Lives

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