
The Story of the Kilombo de Pradinas, LLC
Kilombo de Pradinas, LLC was incorporated in 2017 as a Missouri limited liability company. The phrase Kilombo de Pradinas is special because it literally means prairie settlement in the Provençal and Kikongo languages.
Pradina means prairie in Provençal. The DePradine (Depradine) family are descendants of enslaved West Africans brought to work on the Caribbean island of Grenada. The white DePradine left France in the 1690s to be colonial administrators in the Caribbean. The white DePradines were originally from Berry, France.
Kilombo simply means settlement. In the Americas, particularly colonial Brazil, kilombos referred to runaway settlements inhabited by Africans fleeing mines and plantations. Possibly over half of the enslaved West Africans brought to France’s Caribbean colonies came from the Loango Coast in West Central Africa. Those people and their French enslavers referred to all deported people from the Loango Coast as Kongolese.

