# Religious diversity in Freetown  
A major source of influence on the development of Christianity in Freetown in this early phase was the resettlement of migrants of African origin and descent from British territory in Nova Scotia. By the time the British flag was raised at Freetown on 1 January 1808, the multi-ethnic population of the  
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[^0]:    1 An abbreviation of Sierra Leone.  
colony included a significant proportion of migrants who regarded themselves as Christian. Evangelical forms of Protestantism were particularly strong among the more than 1,100 Black Loyalists who had migrated to Sierra Leone from Nova Scotia in 1792. These descendants of Africans transported to North America had secured their freedom by fighting for the British in the United States War of Independence but, after a period of resettlement in Nova Scotia, their representative Thomas Peters petitioned the directors of the Sierra Leone Company for permission to resettle in Sierra Leone. The 'Nova Scotians' came to West Africa organized in Baptist, Wesleyan Methodist and Huntingdonian Methodist congregations, which had been shaped in the context of the Great Awakening in North America. Their chapels provided a focus for political resistance to company decisions on religious and secular matters, which prevented them from making 'our Children free and happy after us' (Fyfe, 1991, pp. 1-19, pp. 36-40; Walls, 1996, pp. 86-87).