From 1815 to the 1820s, the area along Moruga Road and environs in south Trinidad became the home to over seven hundred formerly enslaved African- Americans and ex-soldiers of the British Colonial Marines. The ex-soldiers had fought in the War of 1812 in the United States and were granted their freedom and land on which to settle in virgin forest in south Trinidad. Known as the Merikins, an abbreviated version of the word “Americans,” they settled mainly in six Company Villages at a time when slavery was still practised.