Former Colonel of the Moore Town (Nanny Town) Maroon community, CLG Harris, who died on May 23, days after celebrating his 100th birthday, is to be buried on July 8 in his hometown in Portland.

Harris will be buried at Nanny Bump, where Nanny, Jamaica’s only national heroine, was buried, after funeral rites at the Paul’s Anglican Church in Moore Town

A number of leading Parliamentarians — including Cabinet ministers Olivia “Babsy” Grange, Robert Montague and Daryl Vaz, as well as opposition People’s National Party (PNP) General Secretary Julian Robinson, whose father is from Moore Town — are scheduled to attend the service.

Maroon colonels from Charles Town, Scots Hall and Accompong will also be attending, and current leader of the Moore Town community, Colonel Wallace Sterling, will speak on behalf of the host community.

Colonel Harris’ grand-daughter, Chemieka Harris, a nurse currently based in the Cayman Islands, told the Jamaica Observer yesterday that the funeral had been delayed from the original date of June 18 in order to accommodate a number of people, including past students of Colonel Harris, who wanted to attend.

The Ministry of Culture, Entertainment, Gender and Sports, which is headed by Grange, and which has been assisting with the preparations, says that so many tributes are expected that some will have to be printed and circulated with the programme in order to fit in at the funeral service.

A committee comprised of family members — York and Lawrence Harris, sons, and grand-daughter Frederika Smith, Colonel Sterling, former Principal of Moore Town Primary School, Renford Grant, and other members of the community — has been collaborating with the ministry in planning the funeral.

Harris, a teacher and a former member of the Jamaican Senate, was born on May 14, 1917. He was leader of the Moore Town Maroons for more than three decades, from 1964 to 1995, when he was replaced by Colonel Sterling.

He taught at a number of schools, including Moore Town Primary, where he was principal, as well as schools in Mocho, Clarendon; Cooper’s Hill, St Andrew; and Tranquility, Portland.

Harris served in the Senate between 1966 and 1972, after he was appointed on the advice of then acting prime minister, Sir Donald Sangster.

He is credited with leading the campaign to have Nanny added to the list of Jamaican National Heroes, increasing the total from six to seven.

Moore Town is a Maroon Village founded in 1739, after the signing of the Peace Treaty with the English by Nanny’s brother, Captain Cudjoe, leader of the Leeward Maroons.

Nanny, at first, refused to sign a treaty with the British but eventually agreed to a truce. After the Truce, Nanny’s Maroon community divided themselves into two groups, one of which went with her Brother Quao to Crawford Town and the other group followed her to a new settlement, New Nanny Town, now called Moore Town.

Moore Town is located along the banks of the Rio Grande. Maroons are mainly descendants of West Africans who, after being brought to Jamaica during the Transatlantic slave trade, fled the oppressive conditions and created their own communities in the rugged, hilly areas of Jamaica’s interior.