Samuel Ajayi Crowther

Ajayi was born around the year 1809, in the town of Osogun, in the Oyo region of the Yoruba country, in what is now Nigeria. His father was a man of some standing in the community, and the family followed the traditional religion of the Yoruba. He grew up in a time of upheaval. The great Oyo empire was breaking up, and the land was ravaged by war between the Yoruba states and by raids from the north. The slave trade, which was carried on by European and African traders along the coast, fed on the confusion. In 1821, when Ajayi was about twelve, his town was attacked by a band of Fulani and Yoruba raiders. He was seized, with his mother, his sister and an infant cousin, and they were led away in chains.

The journey of captivity lasted months. He was sold several times, passing from one master to another. He was separated from his mother and sister, and he did not see them for many years. He was taken to the coast and sold to Portuguese slave traders. He was put on a slave ship at Lagos, in the hold with hundreds of others, packed in the dark and the heat. The ship had hardly left the harbor when it was stopped by the British naval vessel Myrmidon, which was patrolling the coast to suppress the slave trade. The ship was seized, and the captives were freed. Ajayi was taken to Freetown, in Sierra Leone, a colony that had been founded for freed slaves.

In Freetown, he was placed in a school run by the Church Missionary Society. He was an eager student, with a quick mind and a gift for languages. He learned to read and write English in a short time. He was baptized on December 11, 1825, and took the name Samuel Crowther, after a clergyman of the Church Missionary Society who had supported the mission. He was among the first students at Fourah Bay College, which was begun in 1827. He became a teacher. In 1829, he married Susan Thompson, a fellow Yoruba, who had also been freed from a slave ship. They had several children, one of whom, Dandeson, became an archdeacon.

He came to wide attention in 1841, when he was chosen to go as an interpreter and a missionary on the government expedition up the Niger River. The expedition aimed to open the interior of Africa to trade and the gospel and to put an end to the slave trade. It was struck by fever and failed, with many deaths among the Europeans. Crowther was among those who stood up under the strain. His journal of the expedition, which was published, was admired. He went to England in 1842, where he studied at the Church Missionary Society's college at Islington and was ordained in 1843 by the Bishop of London. He was one of the first Africans ordained in the Church of England.

In 1845, he returned to West Africa and was sent to Abeokuta, in the Yoruba country, to open a mission. There, in 1846, he found his mother and a sister, whom he had not seen for twenty-five years. She did not recognize him at first. It was a moving reunion. His mother later became a Christian and was baptized. He worked in Abeokuta for ten years. He translated the Bible into Yoruba, compiled a vocabulary and a grammar of the language, and translated the Prayer Book. His work on the language was the foundation of written Yoruba. He also worked on other languages, among them Igbo, Nupe and Hausa.

In 1857, he took part in a second Niger expedition and founded a mission at Onitsha, on the Niger, which was to be the center of his later work. He led a staff of African clergy and teachers. In 1864, in Canterbury Cathedral, he was consecrated as bishop of the Niger Territories, the first African bishop of the Anglican Church. It was a great moment for Africa. He served for twenty-seven years. He sought to build a church that was led by Africans and supported by Africans. He opposed the practice of making the church dependent on European leadership. He was gentle, patient and careful.

In the 1880s, he faced a crisis. A new generation of younger European missionaries came to the Niger. They were more rigid and more suspicious of African leadership. They accused his staff of moral lapses and financial irregularities. Some of the charges had a basis, and some were exaggerated. In 1890, he was forced to dismiss several of his African clergy and to accept a European authority over the mission. It was a humiliation. In 1891, he suffered a stroke. He died on December 31, 1891, in Lagos, at the age of about eighty-two.

His life shows the effect of a boy who was sold as a slave and who rose to lead a church. He is remembered as the father of the African church and as a pioneer of Bible translation. His story is a reminder that the gospel was carried to Africa not only by missionaries from abroad but by Africans who had been delivered from bondage.