Pompey Museum of Slavery and Emancipation
Museum of slavery and emancipation in Vendue House, where enslaved people were once sold.
Vendue House stands on Bay Street in the centre of Nassau and is among the oldest buildings on New Providence, recorded as a public building in 1784 and thought to date from the 1760s. Known in its early years as the Bourse, the open arcaded market was where goods were auctioned and where enslaved Africans were bought and sold into the nineteenth century. Later uses as a port office, power station and telegraph department brought alterations, including the addition of an upper storey in 1913.
The building was given over as a public museum in 1992 and named after Pompey, an enslaved man who led a protest in 1830 against the removal of people from the Rolle estate at Steventon on Exuma. Displays set out the Atlantic trade, plantation life in the Bahamas, resistance and the emancipation of 1834. A fire gutted the building in December 2011; after a lengthy restoration the museum reopened in November 2014 with an exhibition on the wreck of the slave ship Peter Mowell.
Highlights
- Housed in Vendue House, an eighteenth-century market where people were sold
- Named after Pompey, who led an 1830 protest on the Rolle estate at Exuma
- Displays on the Atlantic trade, resistance and the emancipation of 1834
- Reopened in 2014 after a fire, with an exhibition on the ship Peter Mowell
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