August 4, 1725 - John Newton

John Newton (; 4 August [O.S. 24 July] 1725 – 21 December 1807) was an English evangelical Anglican cleric and slavery abolitionist.

Newton went to sea at a young age and worked on slave ships in the Atlantic slave trade for several years. In 1745, he himself became a slave of Princess Peye, a woman of the Sherbro people in what is now Sierra Leone. He was rescued, returned to sea and the trade, and captained several slave ships. After retiring from active sea-faring, he continued to invest in the slave trade.

Content sourced from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John Newton under CC BY-SA 4.0.