Easmon family

Easmon family

John Farrell Easmon (seated) and his brother Albert Whiggs Easmon
Ethnicity
Current region Freetown, Sierra Leone
Place of origin United States
Members
Distinctions

The Easmon family is a Sierra Leone Creole medical dynasty of African American descent originally based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The Easmon family has ancestral roots in the United States, and in particular Savannah, Georgia and other states in the American South. There are several descendants of the Sierra Leonean family in the United States and in Accra, Ghana and Kumasi, Ghana. The family produced several medical doctors beginning with John Farrell Easmon, the medical doctor who coined the term Blackwater fever and wrote the first clinical diagnosis of the disease linking it to malaria and Albert Whiggs Easmon, who was a leading gynaecologist in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Several members of the family were active in academia, politics, the arts including music, cultural dance, playwrighting and literature, history, anthropology, cultural studies, and anti-colonial activism against racism.

History

The surname Easmon is a variation of the English surname 'Eastman' derived from 'Eastmond'. The Easmon family descends from the 1,192 African Americans known in Sierra Leone as the Nova Scotian Settlers who established the Colony of Sierra Leone and the city of Freetown. The earliest known progenitor of the Easmon family was William Easmon, (d. 1831), an African American trader possibly from North Carolina, who was among one of the original Nova Scotian Settler emigres from Nova Scotia, Canada who established Freetown, Sierra Leone on 11 March 1792. [1]William Easmon had at least one son with his first wife, Mary Easmon and had several children including Walter Richard Easmon (1824-1883) with his second wife, Jane Easmon. Walter Richard Easmon was a merchant based in the Republic of Guinea who was married three times. Walter Richard Easmon was the father of three children with his second wife, Mary Ann MacCormac, including John Farrell Easmon. Walter Easmon was also the father of Albert Whiggs Easmon with Mah Serah, a Susu woman from the Republic of Guinea.

Several branches of the Easmon family intermarried with Creole families of African American, Jamaican Maroon, Northern Irish, French, and English descent including the Boyle, Cuthbert, Elliott, George, MacCormac, Maillat, and Smith, and Spilsbury families. The Easmon family also extends to Ghana and branches of the family in Ghana intermarried mainly with Ga-Dangme families of Sierra Leone Creole, Danish, Scottish, and Welsh descent including the Dove, Augustt, and Evans families.

Members of the Easmon family were prominent in the medical field in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Foremost among the nineteenth century doctors of the family were John Farrell Easmon and Albert Whiggs Easmon. The twentieth century was largely dominated by the careers of Macormack Charles Farrell Easmon, who served in the colonial medical service and Raymond Sarif Easmon who established himself in private practice.

Family achievements

Dr. M.C.F. Easmon, standing on the right, opening up the Sierra Leone Museum

The Easmon family contributed to medical field following the qualification of J.F. Easmon and A.W. Easmon in 1879 and 1895 respectively. John Farrell Easmon coined the term 'Blackwater Fever' and was the first to link the disease directly to malaria. J.F. Easmon was also the first and only British West African in the nineteenth century to be substantively appointed as a Chief Medical Officer or Principal Medical Officer of a British West African territory. Albert Whiggs Easmon was a pioneering gynaecologist in Freetown who received a purse of £100 from the ladies of Freetown.

Edward Mayfield Boyle (1874-1936), the son of Charles Boyle and Sarah Easmon, was a medical practitioner who attended Howard University College of Medicine and was also one of a select group of African American medical doctors who completed courses at Harvard Medical School. Boyle wrote a pamphlet that criticised the discriminatory practices of the British colonial administration towards medical doctors. Edna Elliott-Horton, a niece of Edward Mayfield Boyle, was reportedly the second British West African woman to attend a university when she enrolled and completed her studies at Howard University and the first West African woman to earn a liberal arts degree.

Macormack Easmon was the first West African to receive a Medical Doctorate from London University and challenged colonial racism in the British West African medical service. Macormack Easmon was the founder of the Sierra Leone Museum and as Chairman of the Sierra Leone Monuments and Relics Commission designated several heritage sites in Sierra Leone including Bunce Island long before international interest in the slave fort.

Kathleen Mary Easmon Simango was a talented cultural dance performer, artist and musician, and intended missionary who was the first West African to earn a diploma from the Royal College of Arts. Kathleen Easmon was an active supporter of her maternal aunt, Adelaide Casely-Hayford, and travelled to the United States with her aunt to raise funds for Casely-Hayford's proposed school. Alongside her aunt, Easmon was an honorary member of the Zeta Phi Beta, an African-American sorority.

Raymond Sarif Easmon was a prize-winning scholar at Durham University who wrote several critically acclaimed plays and novels and was a critic of successive governments in Sierra Leone, in particular the governments of Albert Margai and his successor, Siaka Stevens.

Professor Emeritus Charles Syrett Easmon, the grandson of J.F. Easmon, was appointed as a professor in his early thirties and a high-ranking medical administrator, who received a CBE for his contributions to the medical field in 2000. Charles Odamtten Easmon, a grandson of J.F. Easmon, was the first Ghanaian to qualify as a surgeon and was a pioneer cardiac surgeon and gynaecologist.

Notable members

Sources

1. http://www.easmonfambuldem.com/

  1. ↑ Jr, Professor Henry Louis Gates; Akyeampong, Professor Emmanuel; Niven, Mr Steven J. (2012-02-02). Dictionary of African Biography. OUP USA. ISBN 9780195382075.
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