The Cotton Tree: A City's Witness

Few landmarks carry a city's memory the way the Cotton Tree carried Freetown's. It stood in the middle of the old town, with the Law Courts and the National Museum close by, and every road in the centre seemed to bend around it.

Tradition holds that the settlers who arrived from Nova Scotia in 1792 gathered beneath it to give thanks after their voyage. Whether or not every detail of that story is exact, the tree became the city's symbol. It appears on banknotes, in songs and in countless family photographs.

In May 2023, during a heavy rainstorm, the old tree fell. People came from across the city to see it, to take pieces of its bark, and to mourn it.

This article is a starting point. If your family has a story about the Cotton Tree, a photograph taken beneath it, or a memory of the day it fell, add it in the comments below. That is how this archive grows.