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  "path": "/places/memorial-to-reverend-and-mrs-mcgrew",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-12T19:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.atlasobscura.com",
  "tags": [
    "colonialism",
    "memorials"
  ],
  "textContent": "Reverend Lowery Allen McGrew and his wife Clara moved to Sierra Leone in 1896 to serve as missionaries under the aegis of the Woman’s Missionary Board, a protestant missionary association. Both originally from Ohio, the Reverend and Mrs. McGrew settled in Taiama in an outpost of a larger missionary station in Rotifunk. Sierra Leone had been a particular interest for American missionaries since the revolt on _The Amistad_ , which saw the enslaved persons that had survived through their subsequent time in Connecticut returned to Sierra Leone.\n\nThe year 1896 also saw the British establish a Protectorate of Sierra Leone, expanding the borders of their century-old colony in Freetown over the hinterlands. To pay for the administration of the colony, and to force the population into the money economy, the British imposed a hut tax in 1898. The deeply unpopular tax, seen as both an imposition on the people and an attack on traditional sovereignty, ignited the Hut Tax War of 1898.\n\nPresumably targeted for their association with colonial authorities, most of the missionaries in the war-affected areas were killed in a quick series of attacks in May 1898. Those killed included not only the McGrews, but also local missionaries and about a thousand of their followers. The British colonial authorities responded with force, and the rebellion was crushed by the end of the year. New missionaries had re-established themselves at Taiama and elsewhere by November of 1898.\n\nThe marker commemorating the killing of the missionaries in Taiama reads “On this rock the American missionaries Rev. L.A. McGrew & his wife Clara McGrew were massacred May 9, 1898.” However, locals report the actual site of the killing was closer to the riverbank a few yards upstream.",
  "title": "Memorial to Reverend and Mrs. McGrew in Taiama, Sierra Leone"
}