The First Settlers — The Elizabeth, 1820
On February 6, 1820, the ship Elizabeth departed New York harbor carrying 86 free Black settlers and three white agents of the American Colonization Society; the beginning of one of the most extraordinary and most deadly settlement enterprises in modern history.
Sherbro Island and the Mortality Crisis
The settlers first put in at the British colony of Sierra Leone and then at Sherbro Island, where the environment proved catastrophic. Malaria, yellow fever, and other tropical diseases, against which the newcomers had little or no immunity, killed the majority of those who landed. All three white ACS agents died. Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in what would become Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 survived; a survival rate of 39.8 percent. This represents the highest recorded mortality rate of any documented settlement for which modern records exist.
Land Acquisition and Settlement
In 1821, a U.S. Navy vessel resumed the search for a suitable permanent settlement location. Lieutenant Robert Stockton coerced a local Dei ruler at gunpoint, according to some accounts, to sell a strip of land at Cape Mesurado in what is now Montserrado County. This small tract became the nucleus of what would grow into the Liberian colony. From the beginning, relations with the surrounding indigenous communities were tense.
Sources:
Wikipedia — History of Liberia [1];
History.state.gov [6];
Wikipedia — Colony of Liberia [4]