Ashmun

Ashmun, JEHUDI, an American philanthropist, was born at Champlain, New York, in 1794. He was educated for the ministry, but eventually became editor of a magazine in which he advocated the views of the African Colonisation Society for founding a colony of liberated negroes on the west coast of Africa. Receiving an appointment as one of the agents of this association, he conducted a body of liberated negroes from Baltimore, and landed at Cape Mesurado, the seat of the infant colony of Liberia, in the autumn of 1822, and assumed the superintendence of affairs. Here, for more than six years, he devoted himself to establishing, on a fair and solid basis, this colony, so full of hope for the American negro (see LIBERIA). His health failing, he returned to America, and died at New Haven, Connecticut, 25th August 1828. See his Life, by R. R. Gurley (1835).