Osogun, Oyo State
Crowther
Ajayi
Dandeson Coates Crowther
Abigail, married Thomas Babington Macaulay and the two had Herbert Macaulay.
At approximately age thirteen, Ajayi was enslaved by Oyo and Fulani Muslims who invaded Osogun. Ajayi was traded six times before he was sold to a Portuguese slave-ship captain.
Great Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 and attempted to suppress illegal traffic using Royal Navy patrols on the coast of Africa. In April 1822, a British patrol stopped and impounded the slave ship that carried Ajayi.
The captives on board were transported to the colony of Sierra Leone where they were liberated. Several years after arriving in Sierra Leone, Ajayi experienced a religious conversion. He recalled that “it pleased the Lord to open my heart,” and sought membership in the Anglican Church.
Ajayi was baptized by the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) and took the name Samuel Crowther after an eminent clergyman and member of the CMS’s home committee. After his conversion, he became one of the first students to attend Fourah Bay College, a school founded by the CMS in 1827 with the purpose of training Africans in Sierra Leone for Christian service.
In 1841 Crowther began his first missionary work in Nigeria.
After this Nigerian Expedition, Crowther went to England and studied at the CMS College in London. His studies there led to his ordination by the Anglican Church in 1843. After his ordination, Crowther and several others opened a new mission in Yorubaland. He made important linguistic contributions, publishing A Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language, and later translating the Bible and The Book of Common Prayers into the Yoruba language.
In 1841, Crowther was chosen to join a missionary expedition to Niger by James Fredrick Schon.
Noticing his immense contributions towards the Niger Expedition, Schon sent a letter to the church authorities telling them all about Crowther’s work and recommending that he be ordained.
After the expedition, Crowther was recalled to England, where he was trained as a minister and ordained by the Bishop of London.
He went back to Africa in 1843 where he opened a mission in Abeokuta, in today’s Ogun State, with an Anglican missionary named Henry Townsend.
In 1864, he was ordained as the “Bishop of the countries of Western Africa beyond the Queen’s dominions” which made him the first African Bishop in the Anglican Church.
“Please send your updated CV to: [email protected]” – Editor
© Blerf
All entries available on this Website shall be updated from time to time in order to add, modify or amend the information or contents of an existing entry. Accordingly, no legal proceedings whatsoever shall be entertained by the biographer on account of any information deemed to be inadequate or incomplete.
Recent Comments