Did Olaudah Equiano have a family?
Igbo Family As a child, Olaudah Equiano was part of a family that included six siblings who lived beyond childhood. He had one sister and he was the youngest of the five boys. While he mentions only his mother, it is possible that his father had more than one wife.
Who was Olaudah Equiano for kids?
(1745? –97). Olaudah Equiano was a slave whose autobiography is considered by many to be the first significant work about an enslaved person's life. The book is called The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789).
Who was Olaudah Equiano's wife?
Susannah CullenOlaudah Equiano / Wife (m. 1792–1796)
Did Equiano's family own slaves?
In his small village, Equiano had never seen or heard of either white people or the ocean. But he was well acquainted with the institution of slavery, as his upper- class family owned a large number of slaves.
How old was Equiano when he was kidnapped?
age 11According to his own account, Equiano was kidnapped at age 11 and taken to the West Indies. From there he went to Virginia, where he was purchased by a sea captain, Michael Henry Pascal, with whom he traveled widely. He received some education and changed hands twice more before he bought his own freedom in 1766.
How many names did Olaudah Equiano have?
Pascal renamed the boy "Gustavus Vassa", after the 16th-century King of Sweden Gustav Vasa who began the Protestant Reformation in Sweden. Equiano had already been renamed twice: he was called Michael while on board the slave ship that brought him to the Americas; and Jacob, by his first owner.
Did Equiano reunite with his sister?
Sold to slave traders, Equiano was moved several times, 'ownership' changing hands. His attempt to escape failed. He met his sister again at some point in this journey, but their reunion was not to last. About six or seven months after his capture, he was taken to the seacoast where European slavers held him.
Where is Equiano buried?
April 6, 1797Olaudah Equiano / Date of burial
How was Equiano enslaved?
1745 - 1797) In his autobiography, Olaudah Equiano writes that he was born in the Eboe province, in the area that is now southern Nigeria. He describes how he was kidnapped with his sister at around the age of 11, sold by local slave traders and shipped across the Atlantic to Barbados and then Virginia.
Why did Olaudah Equiano change his name?
Transshipped immediately to Virginia, Olaudah, who said his African name meant "vicissitude" or "fortune," became the personal slave of Lt. Michael Henry Pascal of the Royal Navy, who gave him his second name, Gustavus Vassa.
Overview
Early life and enslavement
According to his memoir, Equiano was born in Essaka, Eboe, in the Kingdom of Benin around 1745. The village was in the southeast part of present-day Nigeria. In his autobiography he wrote: "My father, besides many slaves, had a numerous family, of which seven lived to grow up" and that he was the youngest son. He stated that his father was one of the elders or chiefs who sat in judgement with other elders to decide what to do about disputes or crimes. He refers to men cal…
Release
Robert King set Equiano to work on his shipping routes and in his stores. In 1765, when Equiano was about 20 years old, King promised that for his purchase price of 40 pounds (equivalent to £5,800 in 2021) he could buy his freedom. King taught him to read and write more fluently, guided him along the path of religion, and allowed Equiano to engage in profitable trading for his ow…
Freedom
By about 1768, Equiano had gone to England. He continued to work at sea, travelling sometimes as a deckhand based in England. In 1773 on the Royal Navy ship HMS Racehorse, he travelled to the Arctic in an expedition towards the North Pole. On that voyage he worked with Dr Charles Irving, who had developed a process to distill seawater and later made a fortune from it. Two years later, Irving recruited Equiano for a project on the Mosquito Coast in Central America, where he was to …
Pioneer of the abolitionist cause
Equiano settled in London, where in the 1780s he became involved in the abolitionist movement. The movement to end the slave trade had been particularly strong among Quakers, but the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in 1787 as a non-denominational group, with Anglican members, in an attempt to influence parliament directly. Under the Test Act, only those prepared to receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Churc…
Memoir
Entitled The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), the book went through nine editions in his lifetime. It is one of the earliest-known examples of published writing by an African writer to be widely read in England. By 1792, it was a best seller and had been published in Russia, Germany, Holland and the United States. It was the first influential slave narrative of what became a large literary genre. But Equiano's experience in …
Later years
During the American Revolutionary War, Britain had recruited black people to fight with it by offering freedom to those who left rebel masters. In practice, it also freed women and children, and attracted thousands of slaves to its lines in New York City, which it occupied, and in the South, where its troops occupied Charleston, South Carolina. When British troops were evacuated at the end of the war, their officers also evacuated these American slaves. They were resettled i…
Marriage and family
On 7 April 1792, Equiano married Susannah Cullen, a local woman, in St Andrew's Church, Soham, Cambridgeshire. The original marriage register containing the entry for Vassa and Cullen is held today by the Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies. He included his marriage in every edition of his autobiography from 1792 onwards. The couple settled in the area and had tw…