I've been on a historical trail of the extraordinary man of letters, #IgnatiusSancho and I cannot be more proud of "that Affrican with 2 'ffs'."

- Likely born aboard a slave ship
- 1st African voter in in 1774
- One of the foremost epistolarians
- 1st authentic African writer

- 1st African with an obituary featured in a paper
- So good a man he was a mentor to many
- Perhaps the first African bestseller in (posthumous)
- Pioneer African grocer on Westminster
- Was a valet and a butler
- A gentleman-Londoner lover of African humor

#IgnatiusSancho

In a letter to young Jack Wingrave, one of his
protégé, Sancho noted of the fate of the African:

"I say it is with reluctance, that I must observe your country’s conduct has been uniformly wicked in the East–West Indies–and even on the coast of Guinea.

The grand object of English navigators–indeed of all Christian navigators–is money–money–money… In Africa, the poor wretched natives, blessed with the most fertile and luxuriant soil, are rendered so much the more miserable for what Providence meant as a blessing:

the Christians’ abominable traffic for slaves, and the horrid cruelty and treachery of the petty Kings encouraged by their Christian customers who carry them strong liquors, to enflame their national madness, and powder, and bad fire-arms, to furnish them with the hellish means

of killing and kidnapping. But enough it is a subject that sours my blood…"

Excerpt from Letter LXVIII, written by Sancho from an unknown location to Jack Wingrave, son of his associate, John Wingrave (or J—W) in 1778.

Remember your ancestors.
#IgnatiusSancho