Thomas Sturgeon

Thomas Sturgeon (d. 1846) joined the Baptist church at Waltham Abbey in 1829. For about ten years he was a faithful layman, working with the Sunday school and house-to-house visitation. He removed to Bilston in 1840 to become master of the British school there. After one year, he resigned to accept an appointment as a BMS missionary to the new mission at Fernando Po, sailing on the Palmyra on 2 December 1841 and arriving in West Africa in April 1842. The Missionary Herald published numerous letters by Sturgeon in 1842-1844, in which he detailed the progress of the mission at Fernando Po. He quickly established a school, educating approximately seventy scholars by the end of 1842. Sturgeon died, however, after serving just four years in Africa. See Missionary Herald (August 1842), 452-453; Missionary Herald (October 1842), 558-559; (February 1844), 105; F. A. Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, from 1792 to 1842, 2 vols. (London: T. Ward, and G. and J. Dyer, 1842), 2:379, 395.