| Official Name: | Clay-Ashland |
| Settlement Type: | Township |
| Pushpin Map: | Liberia |
| Pushpin Label Position: | middle |
| Pushpin Mapsize: | 200 |
| Pushpin Map Caption: | Location in Liberia |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | Liberia |
| Subdivision Type1: | County |
| Subdivision Name1: | Montserrado County |
| Subdivision Type2: | District |
| Subdivision Name2: | St. Paul River |
| Established Title: | Established |
| Established Date: | 1846 |
| Timezone: | GMT |
| Utc Offset: | +0 |
| Coordinates: | 6.4225°N -10.7247°W |
Clay-Ashland is a township located 10miles from the capital city of Monrovia in Liberia.[1] The town is in the St. Paul River District of Montserrado County.[2] It is named after Henry Clay - a slaveowner and American Colonization Society co-founder who favored gradual emancipation - and his estate Ashland in Lexington, Kentucky.[3]
Established in 1846, Clay-Ashland was part of a colony called Kentucky In Africa,[3] because it was settled by African-American immigrants primarily from the U.S. state of Kentucky under the auspices of the American Colonization Society.
A Kentucky state affiliate of the ACS was formed in 1828, and members raised money to transport Kentucky blacks — freeborn volunteers as well as slaves set free on the stipulation that they leave the United States — to Africa.[3] The Kentucky society bought a 40sqmi site along the Saint Paul River and named it Kentucky in Africa.[3] Clay-Ashland was the colony's main town.[3]
Notable residents have included William D. Coleman, the 13th President of Liberia, whose family settled in Clay-Ashland after immigrating from Fayette County, Kentucky, United States when he was a boy.[4] Moses Ricks, a successful farmer and Baptist missionary who founded the still-running Ricks Institute in 1887 to provide a Christian education to indigenous youth in Liberia, also grew up in the town.[5] Alfred Francis Russell, the 10th President of Liberia, also resided in Clay-Ashland.[6] Martha Ann Erskine Ricks lived here after her father bought her out of slavery. In 1892 she received a Royal audience with Queen Victoria.
The True Whig Party, which dominated Liberian politics for more than a century, was founded in Clay-Ashland in 1869.[7] [8]