William Allen Vivour was a native of Fernando Po, Spanish Guinea

Spanish Guinea

Spanish Guinea was an African colony of Spain that became the independent nation of Equatorial Guinea.-History:The Portuguese explorer, Fernão do Pó, seeking a route to India, is credited with having discovered the island of Bioko in 1472. He called it Formosa , but it quickly took on the name of...

, who was the most successful 19th-century planter owning a substantial amount of farmland on the island. He is part of a prominent Fernandino Krio family.

By the 1880s Vivour employed a massive labor force of men from diverse ethnic origins recruited from the Biafran and beyond. They were from Loango

Kingdom of Loango

The Kingdom of Loango, also known as the Kingdom of Lwããgu, was a pre-colonial African state from approximately the 15th to the 19th century in what is now the Republic of Congo. At its height in the seventeenth century the country stretched from Cape St Catherine in the north to almost the mouth...

; the lower Guinea coast; Accra

Accra

Accra is the capital and largest city of Ghana, with an urban population of 1,658,937 according to the 2000 census. Accra is also the capital of the Greater Accra Region and of the Accra Metropolitan District, with which it is coterminous...

; and Grebo Kruboys (migrant laborers) from Cape Palmas

Cape Palmas

Cape Palmas is a headland on the extreme southeast end of the coast of Liberia, West Africa, at the extreme southwest corner of the northern half of the continent. The Cape itself consists of a small, rocky peninsula connected to the mainland by a sandy isthmus. Immediately to the west of the...

 and the Windward Coast. Vivour also recruited ethnic Bassa

Bassa

-People:Three unrelated ethnic groups of West Africa:*Bassa ** Basaa language is a member of the Bantu languages family.*Bassa **Bassa language is a member of the Kru languages family.**Bassa script-Places:*Bassa, Kogi State, Nigeria...

 and ethnic Bubi. He also employed artisans from Accra who served as coopers

Cooper (profession)

Traditionally, a cooper is someone who makes wooden staved vessels of a conical form, of greater length than breadth, bound together with hoops and possessing flat ends or heads...

, carpenters

Carpentry

A carpenter is a skilled craftsperson who works with timber to construct, install and maintain buildings, furniture, and other objects. The work, known as carpentry, may involve manual labor and work outdoors....

 and smiths.

In his honor, a 40 feet (12.2 m), $600 monument imported from Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, England, was erected in a Protestant cemetery near the Krio settlement Clarence Cove on the island during the late 19th century.