Thomas Corker

Thomas Corker (1669/1670 – 10 September 1700) was known as an English agent for the Royal African Company on York Island (now Sherbro, Sierra Leone). He married a Sherbro princess and had two sons with her before his early death.

His sons also became merchant traders and developed a family dynasty that became prominent among the Sherbro people and British colonists, in the area now known as the Moyamba District, Southern Province, Sierra Leone. As paramount chiefs, they dominated the Bumpe and Kagboro chiefdoms into the 20th century. His brother Robert Corker had a successful career as a politician, serving as mayor of Falmouth five times. and left his Sherbro family behind. On a business trip to England, he died at his birthplace of Falmouth in 1700 and was buried there.

His sons, Robin and Stephen Corker, inherited their mother's chiefdom; they used their English ancestry to build influence with other early traders in the region. The Crown opened up the slave trade beyond the RAC, and the family became influential in and wealthy from it well into the 19th century.

By the 19th century, the family was known as the Caulkers. They dominated the Bumpe Chiefdom in the colony of Sierra Leone and were a major slave trading Afro-European clan in West Africa.

Descendants Today most of the Caulker descendants live in the towns of Bonthe and Shenge in the Moyamba District, where the Sherbro are concentrated. The clan still maintains its oral and written testimony about its English ancestor, Thomas Corker.

Memorial and subsequent controversy Corker was memorialized by a Baroque marble and freestone monument at the Church of King Charles the Martyr, Falmouth, where he had been baptized as a child. In 1978, Rev. W. J. Peter Boyd for Thomas, the rector at that time, issued a delayed Baptism certificate by and his brother, Robert.