The Porte-Best Family Archive documents continuous descent from 1815 across Barbados, Liberia, and the wider diaspora. John Prince Porte Sr., born in Barbados in 1815, is the documented root of this lineage. His descendants include members of the 1865 emigration, civic leaders in Crozierville, and descendants now living across six countries.
Every entry in the archive is linked to a primary source. Every name belongs to a real family. The archive is the model for TABHI's broader family documentation methodology.
Within a single generation of the 1865 voyage, Barbadian-descended men were embedded across the Liberian state — in education, the judiciary, government, and the press. The studio portrait shown here, taken around 1900, captures Hilary A. Barclay (of Barbadian descent) among five prominent Liberian leaders of the period, including President Garretson W. Gibson, Hon. H. A. Williams, Hon. H. W. Grimes, and Hon. H. I. Moore.
The Children of Lemongrass Street is the docuseries documenting the oral histories of Barbadian-Liberian families across six countries. Released in 2024, it captures 80+ family interviews — the living memory of the 1865 emigration, told by the people who carry it.
“Never again will they roam without knowing their history.”
TABHI · The Children of Lemongrass StreetEvery family TABHI documents traces back to one of 346 entries published in the August 1865 issue of The African Repository — the named record of the 347 who sailed in 72 family groups. The names — Padmore, Goodridge, Eastman, Weeks, Carr, Thorpe, Barclay, Porte, Holder, Wiles, and forty more — are listed by age, occupation, and religion, exactly as recorded by the American Colonization Society at the time of departure from Bridgetown.
If your family name appears, the archive can trace it forward.
Read the full 1865 manifestBarbadian-Liberian descendants are found across seven countries, connected by shared heritage and documented by TABHI's ongoing archival work. Hover or tap a marker to see the community context.
Map tiles by CARTO, under CC BY 3.0. Data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Founder of TABHI and architect of the heritage diplomacy programme. Author of Portes Find a New Home in Liberia (2021). Appointed Special Envoy for Cultural and Heritage Diplomacy by the Government of Liberia. Recipient of the Knight Grand Band — Liberia's highest state honour.
Born enslaved in Bridgetown; one of the wealthiest merchants in 1830s Barbados; co-founder and principal patron of the Fatherland Union Barbados Emigration Society — the organisation that sent the brig CORA to Liberia in 1865. Maternal grandfather of Arthur Barclay.
Third President of Liberia. Warner issued the invitation that brought 346 Barbadians to Liberia in 1865. He is the direct link between the two nations' shared history.
Fifteenth President of Liberia. Born in Bridgetown, Barbados, in 1854; emigrated to Liberia as a child with the 1865 group. His presidency embodies the direct lineage from the brig CORA to the Liberian executive.
Eighteenth President of Liberia. Born in Liberia in 1882; his paternal grandparents emigrated from Barbados in 1865 with the CORA group. Wrote the lyrics to The Lone Star Forever at age 19. Led Liberia through the Great Depression, the League of Nations sovereignty crisis, and the country's wartime alliance with the United States.
Chairman of the National Transitional Government of Liberia and Head of State following the country's second civil war. Selected (not elected) by the warring factions as a politically neutral figure to oversee the transition until elections were held. Of Barbadian descent. Honoured alongside Arthur and Edwin Barclay at the Crozierville Presidential Monument unveiled by Presidents Boakai and Mason on 10 May 2025.
One of approximately fifty Barbadian families who emigrated to Liberia on the brig CORA in 1865. The Porte-Best line is the founding lineage of the TABHI genealogical archive because it is the line of TABHI's founder, Ambassador L. Llewellyn Witherspoon — whose 2021 monograph Portes Find a New Home in Liberia established the methodology now applied across all 1865 emigrant families.
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