Sligoville is a small community approximately 10 miles from Spanish Town

Spanish Town

Spanish Town is the capital and the largest town in the parish of St. Catherine in the county of Middlesex, Jamaica. It was the former Spanish and English capital of Jamaica from the 16th to the 19th century...

 in the parish of St. Catherine

Saint Catherine Parish, Jamaica

St Catherine is a parish located in the south east of Jamaica. It is located in the county of Middlesex, and is one of the island's largest and most economically valued parish because of its many resources. It includes the first capital of Jamaica, Spanish Town, originally known as San Jago de la...

 on the island of Jamaica.

Sligoville is named after the Marquess of Sligo

Howe Browne, 2nd Marquess of Sligo

Howe Peter Browne, 2nd Marquess of Sligo, KP, PC, PC , , was an Irish peer and colonial governor, styled Viscount Westport until 1800 and Earl of Altamont from 1800 to 1809....

, Governor of Jamaica in 1834, the year that freedom came to the enslaved people of Jamaica. Sligoville was said to be the first ‘free village’ to be established, and this was done by Rev. James Mursell Phillippo

James Phillippo

James Phillippo was a Baptist missionary who campaigned for the abolition of slavery.-Early years as a missionary:...

, English Baptist minister stationed in Spanish Town, on land which was acquired in 1835. What became known as ‘The Free Village System

Free Villages

Free Villages is the term used for Caribbean settlements, particularly in Jamaica, founded in the 1830s and 1840s independent of the control of plantation owners and other major estates.-Pioneering the concept:...

’ resulted from this first settlement, and similar villages were established throughout the island, most of them by ministers of religion, who supplied land to the ex-slaves who had never owned land before.