Gronniosaw, James Albert Ukawsaw

By: Joanna Brooks

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

Gronniosaw, James Albert Ukawsaw

(b. c. 1710; d. c. 1773),
Afro-British slave, spiritual narrator, and writer.

James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw was born in present-day northeastern Nigeria to a daughter of the royal family of Bournou (Bornu). As a young man, he left his home and family when a traveling Gold Coast merchant lured him away with marvelous tales of coastal trade with Europeans. Upon his arrival at the Gold Coast, Gronniosaw was accused of espionage by a rival king, condemned to execution, and sold to a Dutch slave merchant.

After surviving the Middle Passage from Africa to Barbados, Gronniosaw was purchased first by a wealthy Dutch family of New York City and then, in 1730, by the Dutch Reformed minister Theodorus Frelinghuysen. Frelinghuysen, a famous proponent of religious revivalism, provided Gronniosaw with a religious education and guided his conversion to Christianity. Gronniosaw also learned to read Dutch under the tutelage of a local schoolmaster. When Frelinghuysen died in 1747 or 1748, Gronniosaw was manumitted, and he subsequently made his living—as did many black men in the eighteenth century—by working at sea on a privateer.

Gronniosaw soon conceived a desire to go to England, inspired by the reputation of the famous English divines Richard Baxter and George Whitefield. He secured his passage to England by enlisting in the English navy during the Seven Years' War, during which he fought in skirmishes at Martinique and Cuba. Landing in Portsmouth, England, in 1762, Gronniosaw traveled to London, where he was introduced to Whitefield; met his future wife, Betty; and joined the church of the famed Baptist preacher Andrew Gifford. At the invitation of friends of the late Frelinghuysen, Gronniosaw traveled to Amsterdam, Holland, in 1763, where he delivered his conversion narrative to ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church.

Upon his return to London, Gronniosaw married Betty, a white woman whose work as a weaver initially sustained the family. Textile industry upheavals kept Gronniosaw and his family in a precarious economic position. In search of work, they moved from London to Colchester to Norwich; they faced near starvation, suffered mistreatment from employers, encountered prejudice from neighbors, and lost a child to illness. Gronniosaw and his family finally settled in Kidderminster, attracted by employment prospects and the religious legacy of the Kidderminster native Richard Baxter, whose devotional writings were instrumental in Gronniosaw's conversion.

A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself was published in 1770. It is among the earliest published narratives of the black slave and religious experience, and it is the first published autobiography that documents the author's early life in Africa. Hannah More, an English abolitionist and writer, served as Gronniosaw's amanuensis and scribe. Gronniosaw's story of African origins, enslavement, emancipation, and religious conversion found broad and lasting popularity. More than twenty editions were published in England, Ireland, Wales, and America during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His Narrative was especially influential among other eighteenthcentury black authors, such as John Marrant, Olaudah Equiano, and John Jea. Gronniosaw introduced to early black literature the trope of the talking book, which represents the transition from oral African culture to European print literacy and the struggle of early black writers to declare their humanity and authority in a society that viewed print literacy as an essential marker of civilization. Equiano, Marrant, and Jea, following Gronniosaw, also use the trope of the talking book in their narratives of the black experience.

Gronniosaw's Narrative reflects the strong influence of evangelical Christianity in early African American and Afro-British communities. Gronniosaw himself probably participated in the New York–area revivals associated with the Great Awakening. His slave masters, teachers, and religious leaders introduced him to Christian writings by John Bunyan and Richard Baxter that described the spiritual path of the Christian as a pilgrimage. These writings resonated powerfully with his own experiences of estrangement, displacement, loneliness, hardship, and emancipation, and Gronniosaw adopted the conversion narrative, or spiritual pilgrimage, as a framework for his own autobiography.

Indeed, his Narrative suggests that Gronniosaw viewed his enslavement as a necessary, if difficult episode in his journey to the Christian faith. As a child, Gronniosaw remembers, he rejected traditional African worship customs and received strong impressions of a “Superior Power” in the heavens similar to the Christian God. According to the Narrative, these early religious impressions drove Gronniosaw to leave his home and caravan to the Gold Coast, thus beginning an extended spiritual journey that led eventually to his relationship with Frelinghuysen, his conversion, and his residence in Kidderminster. Gronniosaw thus presented the black experience as a type of spiritual pilgrimage, adopting a religious framework to make sense of the atrocities of the slave trade and slavery.

The Narrative also reflects Gronniosaw's awareness of contemporary English attitudes toward Africa. Describing himself as an “African prince,” Gronniosaw positioned his story within a body of popular English literature about “black princes” or “African princes” appealing to the English imperial imagination of “noble savages” among colonized peoples. It also appears that Gronniosaw may have drawn some details of his topographical and natural descriptions of Africa from colonial travel and exploration accounts, for example, the Dutch explorer William Bosman'sNew and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (1705). This is not to cast doubt on the authenticity of his autobiography. Indeed, while historical research suggests that Gronniosaw's contemporary Olaudah Equiano may have fabricated the account of his African childhood in his 1789 autobiography, no evidence has been discovered to disprove Gronniosaw's African origins. His literary borrowings do demonstrate that Gronniosaw was aware that his English and American audiences harbored racist and imperialist preconceptions about Africa. Like other early black authors, Gronniosaw used his writing to promote more ennobling views of Africa and African-descended peoples.

See also Autobiography; Black Seafarers; Dutch Reformed Church and African Americans; Equiano, Olaudah; Great Awakening; Jea, John; Literacy in the Colonial Period; Literature; Marriage, Mixed; Marrant, John; Religion; Seven Years' War; Slave Narratives; and Spirituality.

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