The illustrious Vivour family’s patriarch is William Allen Vivour (1830–1890). Garnet Rhodes-Vivour was his daughter, Chief Judge Akinwunmi R.W. Rhodes-Vivour was his grandfather, Olawale Rhodes-Vivour was his great-grandfather, and Gbadebo Patrick Rhodes-Vivour, popularly known as GRV, was his great-great-grandfather.
William Allen Vivour’s large and thriving cocoa plantation in Fernando Po (Equatorial Guinea) made him the most successful planter in Africa throughout the 19th century.His father was a recaptive of Yoruba descent from what is now Lagos. The British West Africa Squadron resettled him in Sierra Leone until he eventually made his way to what is now Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria.
In the period preceding the Jaja-Ibeno War, W. A. Vivour’s interest in palm oil became so great that it put him in direct conflict with King Jaja of Opobo. The term “Survivor,” which refers to the events that preceded his father’s arrival in Sierra Leone, is abbreviated as “Vivour.” Born in Sierra Leone, William Allen Vivour had four siblings—two brothers and two sisters—including Jacob and Sally Vivour, Robert Wellesley Cole’s grandparents.
William Allen Vivour left Sierra Leone in 1855 to establish himself as a base in Fernando Po, Nigeria.
Britain seized control of Sierra Leone in 1807, renaming the country’s capital Freetown, and abolished the trade in African slaves. All Africans who had been rescued from attempted enslavement at sea were settled and taught there. About fifty thousand Africans were freed and set free in Freetown between the year the slave trade was abolished in 1807 and the year the last slaving ship was captured in 1863. While many went back to their homes, many more stayed in Freetown.
Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther and Crispin Curtis Adeniyi-Jones were notable among them. The forebears of football player Curtis Jones, who plays for the Liverpool football club, are Thomas Babington Macaulay (founder of CMS grammar school), Samuel Johnson (author of the History of Yorubas), and Christopher Sapara Williams.
They all had access to education, spoke English as a common tongue, were Christians, and enjoyed freedom. The Krios, or Sierra Leone Creoles, were the new name for these African immigrants. Above all, they considered white people as equals and demanded to be treated as such when they rose to prominence as the leaders and developers of western Africa. They established a higher education institution by 1827, and a grammar school for both boys and girls by 1845. Their first English bishop was consecrated by 1864. Amelia Barleycorn, a member of a well-known Fernandino family, was married to W. A. Vivour.
Among their many offspring was Garnet Vivour, who became the father of Justice R.W.A. Rhodes-Vivour and Bankole Vivour, an RAF pilot.
In the period preceding the Jaja-Ibeno War, W. A. Vivour’s interest in palm oil became so great that it put him in direct conflict with King Jaja of Opobo. At the time, Vivour had agreements with the Ibeno hierarchy to enable him to build trading factories on the Kwa Ibo and engage in direct trade with Liverpool. Ibeno sovereignty existed apart from Opobo in Jaja. “Mr. Vivour would not have the right to trade there, even though I had no claim to the territory near the mouth of the Qua Eboe River, since any oil which he could get would either be bought in or drawn from my markets,” declared Jaja, who was aware of this.
Finally, there was no conversation between the Opobo and the Ibeno. Jaja was not amused to find the same Liverpool traders, whom he had expelled from Opobo due to their support of free trade, setting up trading factories on the Kwa Ibo. The Ibeno hierarchy had agreements with about twenty-eight of them, including Vivour, Holt, George Watts, and Henry Watts. Jaja threatened war, but the Ibeno disregarded him. “Whatever rights Jaja has at Opobo were conferred by Her Majesty’s Consul and no rights whatsoever were given to him over the Qua Iboe people,” European traders warned Ibeno chiefs not to worry.
Vivour flourished in the profitable palm oil trade until 1861, when the general drop in oil prices brought an end to the palm oil boom. From 1861 to 1865, prices were £37 per ton; however, from 1886 and 1890, they dropped to £20 per ton.
In the late 1870s and early 1880s, prices cut in half, and growth peaked. Exports started to fall off in important areas like Opobo, and by the 1880s, Europeans were buying property from the native Bubi and investing in the island’s cocoa industry. Following Vivour’s passing in the 1890s, an African-American visitor observed that the lavishness of his tomb attested to his commercial success:
There is a monument at the cemetery dedicated to Mr. William Vivour’s remembrance. This statue, which stands forty feet tall, cost six hundred dollars to transport from Liverpool. Upon his passing, Amelia Barleycorn Vivour, his widow, possessed the island’s largest cocoa plantation, spanning 400 hectares in San Carlos.