Knibb, William

Knibb, William, a Baptist missionary to Jamaica, was born at Kettering, in Northamptonshire, England, about 1800. He sailed as a missionary to Kingston, Jamaica, in 1824; in 1828 removed to the Ridgeland Mission, in the north-western part of the island, and subsequently became pastor of the mission church at Falmouth. He exercised a very important part in bringing about the Emancipation Act of 1833, by which slavery was abolished in the island, and afterwards so exposed the apprenticeship system established by the same act as to secure the complete emancipation of apprentices in the island. In 1838 he erected a normal school at Kettering, in Trelawney, for training native and other schoolmistresses for both Jamaica and Africa, and in 1842 he visited England to promote the establishment of a theological seminary in connection with the native mission to Africa. He died at Kettering July 15,1845.