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Sunday, May 7, 2023

Information About Sarah Forbes Bonetta - 19th century England's Queen Victoria's Nigerian "Goddaughter" And 2021 Comments From Two Of Her Descendants.


Forgotten Lives, Jun 15, 2021  #ForgottenLives #AfricanPrincess

Welcome to Forgotten Lives! In today's episode we are looking into the life of Sarah Forbes Bonetta
a young African princess who was enslaved, introduced to Captain Frederick E. Forbes and who soon developed a close relationship with Queen Victoria.

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Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post quotes three online articles about Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the Nigerian "Goddaughter" of 19th century England's Queen Victoria.

This post also documents some YouTube discussion thread comments that were allegedly written by a few of Sarah Forbes Bonetta's descendants.

The content of this post is presented for historical, socio-cultural, and educational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to the memory of Sarah Fobes Bonetta, and thanks to all those who are quoted in this post. Thanks also to all those who are associated with the YouTube video that is embedded in this post.

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ONLINE EXCERPTS ABOUT SARAH FORBES BONETTA
These excerpts are given in no particular order and are numbered for referencing purposes only/

EXCERPT #1
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Forbes_Bonetta
"Sara Forbes Bonetta, otherwise known as Sally Forbes Bonetta, (born Aina or Ina; 1843 – 15 August 1880),[2] was ward and goddaughter of Queen Victoria. She was believed to have been a titled member of the Egbado clan of the Yoruba people in West Africa, who was orphaned during a war with the nearby Kingdom of Dahomey as a child, and was later enslaved by King Ghezo of Dahomey. She was given as a "gift" to Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the British Royal Navy and became a goddaughter of Queen Victoria. She married Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, a wealthy Lagos philanthropist.

 

In July 1850, Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy arrived to West Africa on a British diplomatic mission, where he unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate with King Ghezo to end Dahomey's participation in the Atlantic slave trade.[7] As was customary, Captain Forbes and King Ghezo exchanged gifts with each other. King Ghezo offered Forbes a footstool, rich country cloth, a keg of rum, ten heads of cowry shells, and a caboceers stool.[8] King Ghezo also offered him Aina, who was intended to be a gift for Queen Victoria. Forbes estimated that Aina was enslaved by King Ghezo for two years. Although her actual ancestry is unknown,[9] Forbes came to the conclusion that Aina was likely to have come from a high status background since she had not been sold to European slave traders.[8] Describing Aina in his journal, he wrote: "one of the captives of this dreadful slave-hunt was this interesting girl. It is usual to reserve the best born for the high behests of royalty and the immolation on the tombs of the deceased nobility…".[10]

Dahomey was notorious for mass executing its captives in spectacular human sacrifice rituals as part of the Annual Customs of Dahomey. Forbes was aware of Aina's potential deadly fate in Dahomey, and as he wrote in his journal, refusing Aina "would have been to have signed her death-warrant, which probably would have been carried into execution forthwith."[10][8] Captain Forbes accepted Aina on behalf of Queen Victoria and embarked on his journey back to Britain.[10]

Captain Forbes renamed her Sara Forbes Bonetta, after himself and his ship HMS Bonetta. Forbes initially intended to raise her himself. However, Queen Victoria was impressed by the young princess's "exceptional intelligence", and had the girl, whom she called Sally,[11] raised as her goddaughter in the British middle class.[11][12][13] In 1851, Sara developed a chronic cough, which was attributed to the climate of Great Britain. Her guardians sent her to school in Africa in May of that year, when she was aged eight.[11] She attended the Annie Walsh Memorial School (AWMS) in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The school was founded by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in January 1849 as an institution for young women and girls who were relatives of the boys in the Sierra Leone Grammar School founded in 1845 (at first named CMS Grammar School). In the school register, her name appears only as Sally Bonetta, pupil number 24, June 1851, who married Captain Davies in England in 1862 and was the ward of Queen Victoria. She returned to England in 1855, when she was 12. She was entrusted to the care of Rev Frederick Scheon and his wife, who lived at Palm Cottage, Canterbury Street Gillingham. The house survives.[14] In January 1862, she was invited to and attended the wedding of Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Alice.[15]

Marriage and children

 She was later commanded by the Queen to marry Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies at St Nicholas' Church in Brighton, East Sussex, in August 1862, after a period spent in the town preparing for the wedding. During her subsequent time in Brighton, she lived at 17 Clifton Hill in the Montpelier area.[16]

Captain Davies was a Yoruba businessman of considerable wealth, and after their wedding the couple moved back to their native Africa, where they had three children: Victoria Davies (1863), Arthur Davies (1871), and Stella Davies (1873).[17] Sara Forbes Bonetta continued to enjoy such a close relationship with Queen Victoria that she and Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther were the only Lagos indigènes the Royal Navy had standing orders to evacuate in the event of an uprising in Lagos. Victoria Matilda Davies, Bonetta's first daughter, was named after Queen Victoria, who was also her godmother.[18] She married the successful Lagos doctor Dr. John Randle, becoming the stepmother of his son, Nigerian businessman and socialite J. K. Randle.[19] Bonetta's second daughter Stella Davies and Herbert Macaulay, the grandson of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, had a daughter together: Sarah Abigail Idowu Macaulay Adadevoh, named after her maternal grandmother Sara and her paternal grandmother Abigail.[17] A descendant of Sara's through her line was the Ebola heroine Ameyo Adadevoh. Many of Sara's other descendants now live in either Britain or Sierra Leone; a separate branch, the Randle family of Lagos, remains prominent in contemporary Nigeria.[18][20][21]

Death and legacy

Sara Forbes Bonetta died of tuberculosis on 15 August 1880[2] in the city of Funchal, the capital of Madeira Island, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic Ocean. In her memory, her husband erected an over-eight-foot granite obelisk-shaped monument at Ijon in Western Lagos, where he had started a cocoa farm.[22] The inscription on the obelisk reads:[2]

IN MEMORY OF PRINCESS SARAH FORBES BONETTA

WIFE OF THE HON J.P.L. DAVIES WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE AT MADEIRA AUGUST 15TH 1880

AGED 37 YEARS"...

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EXCERPT #2
From 
https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/trails/black-and-asian-history-and-victorian-britain/sarah-forbes-bonetta-and-family
"Born in West Africa of Yoruba descent, Sarah Forbes Bonetta was captured in 1848, at the age of five, during the Okeadon War. King Gezo of Dahomy captured the city of Okeadon, sacrificing many inhabitants and leading the rest away into slavery. While her family were killed in the war, as the daughter of an African chief, Sarah was kept in captivity as a state prisoner, either to be presented to an important visitor, or to be sacrificed at the death of a minister or official to become his attendant in the next world.

In June 1850 Captain Forbes, on board the Bonetta, arrived in Dahomey on a mission to negotiate the suppression of the slave trade. While there, he asked the King for the little girl as a present, whether for himself or on behalf of Queen Victoria is not clear. The request was granted and the child was brought to England, being given the names of Forbes Bonetta, after the Captain and the ship.

She lived at first with Captain Forbes's family, then, on 9 November, she was taken to Windsor Castle and received by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The queen paid for Sarah to be educated and saw her several times in the space of a few years. Sarah, a highly intelligent girl, developed a particular talent for music. She married in 1862 and later had a daughter, Victoria, to whom the queen acted as godmother.

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EXCERPT #3
From https://www.insider.com/queen-victoria-colonial-godchildren-british-empire-history-poc-2023-5#:~:text=Queen%20Victoria%20had%20several%20wards,image%20of%20civiliza  "he complicated history of Queen Victoria's colonial godchildren, who became symbols of assimilation and civilization in the British Empire" by Yoonji Han May 5, 2023
...[Sarah Forbes] Bonetta was just one of Queen Victoria's several colonial godchildren, who became the faces of the royal family as it attempted to project a new image of benefaction and inclusion across its growing empire.

[…]

In England, Queen Victoria welcomed Bonetta, who stayed with Forbes' family and regularly visited the queen. Queen Victoria affectionately called her Sally and wrote fondly of her in her diary: "After luncheon Sally Bonita, the little African girl came with Mrs. Phipps, and showed me some of her work. This is the fourth time I have seen the poor child, who is really an intelligent little thing."

But Bonetta was more than just a companion for the queen. Both Queen Victoria and Forbes saw a way to use Bonetta to promote Christianity in Africa and its other colonies.

The historian David Olusoga described Bonetta as someone who became "biographic shorthand for the perceived accomplishments of Britain's civilizing mission."

When Bonetta married James Davies, a West African businessman who was the descendant of freed slaves, in August 1862, national and colonial press lauded their wedding: One newspaper suggested the wedding of two successful, Anglicized Africans was proof of the royal family's philanthropy. Another report suggested the "marriage of a lady and gentleman of color" was a "ceremony of particular interest to those who have watched the progress of civilization caused by the influence of Christianity on the negro," Olusoga said on BBC.

With royal permission, Bonetta and Davies named their daughter Victoria after the queen, who became her godmother. The queen presented the baby with gold cutlery engraved with the message: "To Victoria Davies, from her godmother, Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, 1863."

After Bonetta died of tuberculosis in 1880, at 37 years old, her daughter Victoria attended Cheltenham Ladies College, her education paid by her godmother, the queen.

[Content is included here about Indian female who was also Queen Victoria’s goddaughter. She wasn’t allowed to see her  family etc.]

In the 1860s, Queen Victoria brought in two more godchildren: Prince Alamayu, son of the emperor of Abyssinia, and Albert Victor Pōmare, the son of Maori people who traveled to England as part of a tour organized by a preacher.

The queen treated her godchildren as kin*, providing for their education and behavior training. But they were also a way for Britain to advance Christianity, and also for the British royal family to project a new image of themselves across the Empire, according to Atwal. Photographs and the press presented them as an inclusive, tolerant family — but when the godchildren fell out of favor, they would also incur the wrath of the newly-emerging popular press in a prescient echo of Meghan Markle's treatment by British tabloids, Atwal said.”…
-snip-
*Here's a comment from the discussion thread for the YouTube video entitled "Sarah Forbes Bonetta Davies - An Enslaved African Princess Turned Socialite" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0xOG_FXoR0, published by Royal, Black, and Elite, Aug 6, 2022

pimpingmrli, 2022
..."I agree with most of your opinions about this situation...but if you read more about Queen Victoria, you will find that the kind of superficial way she talked about Sara is the way she talked about everybody.  She forced most of her children to marry people they didn't want to marry and meddled in their lives constantly.  And when you say she had these 9 kids she loved, she actually didn't like most of her children at all....just Albert.  And that was a weird relationship.  There's a PBS documentary about the Queen and her 9 children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqEW_GrFis4

I don't think she was racist at all.  Most of her court was, as was Bertie (King Edward VII).  She was however, very neurotic...kind of a bi—ch* at times. 

And she didn't have much say in the Empire.  She was told a lot of lies about what was going on in the colonies.  Most of them she never got to see.

She is a very complicated figure.  I enjoyed the video very much!"
-snip-
*This word is fully spelled out in this comment

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SELECTED COMMENTS FROM THE DISCUSSION THREAD FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO THAT IS EMBEDDED IN THIS PANCOCOJAMS POST  

This compilation includes a few comments from people other than Sarah Forbes Bonetta's descendants:

1, Faldas Rojas, 2021
"I would love to know what happened to her children after her death"

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Reply
2. temitope randle, 2021
"We are here, what do you want to know?"

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3. Libby Lib, 2021
"Sarah was a relative on my mother's side 🥳My mum told me about the crockery Sarah received as part of her wedding gift from Queen Victoria still displayed in Lagos. I don't recall the obelisk (?). My mum claimed some of her relatives emigrated to Nigeria because of some wars in Sierra Leone. Learned a little more about this story today. Thank you very much 🙏"

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Reply
4. Berenice Waters, 2021
"How fascinating that you family actually are related to her. I live very near where she was raised in Gillingham in Kent."

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Reply
5. Libby Lib, 2021
"@Berenice Waters  Wowser! I didn't of her existence or family connection untill about 15 years ago from my mum. I subsequently looked her up online as I had great difficulty believing the story."

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Reply
6. AFRICA SeenHeard, 2021
"I am part of the Nigerian branch of the family. Sarah's daughter Victoria married a Nigerian gentleman (my great grandfather Dr John Randle - he graduated as a surgeon from Edinburgh University in 1888 and was put forward as husband material by Queen Victoria; it seems Victoria had little choice if wanting to maintain royal favour). They married and lived in Lagos and had two children. Victoria's descendants via her son are a branch of the Randle family of Lagos Island, Nigeria. If you are in Sierra Leone, I guess you descend from Beatrice? My grandfather was the elder half brother of Victoria's children (Dr Randle's first born child of his marriage to Brazilian returnee Maria Jose Domingo). All of the children got on regardless of differing mothers and visited and at times lived in the UK throughout the early 1900s and were received warmly by the British Royal family. My mother recalls her father's memories of childhood play with David (later Edward VIII).

There are photos of Victoria and her two biological children in the Royal Collection. Her daughter Beatrice was named after Princess Beatrice, who was her godmother. Princess Beatrice was the fifth daughter and youngest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and her mother's favourite. She was a close friend of Victoria Randle nee Davies throughout their lives. The royal family chose and gifted Victoria with a wedding dress when she married my great grandfather. I have all of these facts and supporting media in family archive. I will write a piece on my Blog later in the year https://africaseenheard.wordpress.com/ as it seems to remain a story of great public interest. I have one post on my Aguda heritage already up: Uniquely Nigerian. I will now watch this video with interest."
-snip-
I reformatted this comment to increase its readability.

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Reply 
7. 
Libby Lib, 2021
" @AFRICA SeenHeard  Small world. Sadly, my mother didn't tell me much until shortly before she passed away to help with my UK settlement. I know of a Brazilian connection through one of my now deceased female cousins (surname Da Costa). I lived outside of Nigeria, so knew next to nothing other than the fact that my mum was born in Congo and grew up with her "Saro"/ Sierra Leonian relatives in Lagos. Her mother's name was Catherine. She spoke often of Herbert McCauley (sp) - image on NGN - also being a relative.Not sure if they are connected. I will check out your website for my long lost relatives. Fun fact, my father also comes from royalty, but his dad didn't want to know, so he left their village and lived as Joe Bloggs - like me 🙃"

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Reply
8. AFRICA SeenHeard, 2021
" @Libby Lib  Be in touch via my blog. I grew up knowing some of the Da Costas in London. The Aguda community in UK is quite interconnected just like back on Lagos Island in the Brazilian Quarters. Great to connect with you ✨"
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Here’s information about the referent “Aguda”:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilians_in_Nigeria [retrieved May 7, 2023]
“Brazilians in Nigeria, Amaros or Agudas consist of the descendants of freed Afro-Brazilian slaves who left Brazil and settled in Nigeria. The term Brazilians in Nigeria can also otherwise refer to first generation expatriates from Brazil.

Starting from the 1830s, many emancipated Africans who had been through forced labour and discrimination in Brazil began moving back to Lagos, bringing along with them some cultural and social sensibilities adapted from their sojourn in Brazil. These emancipated Africans were often called "Aguda" or "Amaro", and also included returnees from Cuba. As of today there are less than 200 Brazilian citizens registered within the consulate in Nigeria."...

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