Samuel Ajayi Crowder

Samuel Ajayi Crowther (c.1807-1891) was born in Western Nigeria, he was sold into slavery when about thirteen, but was eventually freed when the Portuguese ship on which he had been bound was captured by the British and the slaves taken to Sierra Leone. Three years later he became a Christian and renamed after a prominent leader in the Church Missionary Society. He was one of the first students at Fourah Bay College, Freetown, specializing in linguistics. After serving a time as a schoolmaster, he was chosen to be the interpreter for Thomas Buxton’s unsuccessful Niger Expedition (see letter 191). Crowther’s abilities did not go unnoticed, however, and he came to England with the remaining leaders of the Expedition to seek ordination in the Church of England. He returned to his original homeland and joined the Anglican mission near Abeokutu, Nigeria. He journeyed to England in 1851, speaking throughout the country and meeting Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He published a number of grammar texts in African languages and was one of the earliest scholars of the Igbo language. In 1864 he was appointed bishop for Western Africa; in 1889 dissention arose among a group of white clergy in Western Africa that led to a splitting of the black and white leadership in Western Africa. When he died two years later, Crowther was replaced by a white bishop. See John Flint, “Crowther, Samuel Ajayi,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); David Killingray, “The Black Atlantic Missionary Movement and Africa, 1780s-1920s,” Journal of Religion in Africa 33 (2003), 3-31.