George Grenfell

George Grenfell was born on August 21, 1849, in Sancreed, Cornwall, England. His father was a skilled workman in the iron trade, and the family moved to Birmingham when George was a boy. He grew up in a poor household and had little schooling. He left school at the age of fourteen to work in a hardware store. He was a thoughtful boy and was influenced by the Baptist church that he attended. At the age of fifteen, he was converted and was baptized.

He read the story of Livingstone's travels in Africa and was moved by the need of the continent. He felt called to be a missionary. He was accepted by the Baptist Missionary Society and in 1874 was sent to the Cameroons, where he worked with Alfred Saker. He spent a few years there. In 1878 he and another missionary, Thomas Comber, were sent to explore the Congo River, to find a place for a new mission. They had been encouraged by the reports of Henry Morton Stanley, who had traveled down the river from Lake Tanganyika to the sea.

He was a man of practical skills, and he taught himself surveying and navigation. He worked on the Congo for more than twenty years, and he made a great series of explorations. He was the first European to explore many of its tributaries, among them the Ubangi, the Lomami and the Lulonga. He built and operated a steamer called Peace, which he assembled from parts carried overland. It was one of the first steamers on the upper river. He traveled thousands of miles and mapped large areas that had never been charted. The Royal Geographical Society honored him for his work.

His missionary work was done alongside his exploring. He founded mission stations on the upper Congo, at places such as Bolobo, Yakusu and Yalemba. He studied the languages and wrote down the first records of several. He taught the people and treated them with respect. He was also deeply concerned about the abuses of the Belgian king, Leopold, who ruled the Congo Free State as his personal possession, and he wrote about the cruelty that he saw. He did not live to see the reforms that followed.

His personal life was marked by great loss. He married a West Indian woman, Rose Edgerley, who died in 1893 after a long illness. Two of his children also died in Africa. He suffered frequent bouts of malaria and other fevers. He was often alone and poor. He was also a person who found it hard to relax and took on large projects. Some of his colleagues thought that he sometimes put exploration ahead of evangelism, though he insisted that the two went together.

He died on July 1, 1906, at Basoko, on the Congo River, of blackwater fever. He was fifty-six years old. He was buried in the land that he had served. His life shows what a man of humble origin can do when he gives himself to the cause of Christ. He opened the heart of Africa to the gospel, and his maps and his example gave a way to those who came after him.