Queen Nanny
Born in Ghana in western Africa, to the Ashanti tribe, Queen Nanny was brought to Jamaica as a slave and ended up being a Maroon leader in Jamaica during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Escaping from slavery with her four brothers, and several others, Nanny escaped into the mountains and jungles of Jamaica and eventually founded a village in the Blue Mountains, on the Eastern side of Jamaica, which became known as Nanny Town.
RELATED STORIES
By 1720, as the leader of the maroon settlement, Nanny trained her maroon warriors in the art of guerilla warfare due to incessant tension between her people and the British.
British forces attacked jungles in Jamaica and during one of the bloody battles, Nanny was killed. The war went on until Cudjoe, a maroon leader and brother of Nanny, signed a peace treaty with the British in 1739.
The Maroons were granted five hundred acres of land to settle on; this became known as New Nanny Town.
Apart from being on the logo for the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, she is also on the Jamaican $500 note, one of the banknotes in circulation in Jamaica.
