History: The Joiners

The Joiners have been in The Gambia for about 200 years. The first person to have the name was Thomas Henry Joiner, who arrived back to these shores in 1808 after 40 years of slavery in America and possibly the West Indies. Joiner is said to have been captured around the late 1760’s at 15 or 16 (no one really knows) on the shores of the River Gambia and taken to the American Colony of Virginia and later Georgia. It is reported that this was where he was given his christian name and where he spent the bulk of his years as a slave. Today, in the United States, Joiners of black African ancestry can be found in large numbers in Georgia, Florida and Virginia.

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