Captured as a boy and freed from a slave ship, Samuel Ajayi Crowther became Africa’s first Anglican bishop

In 1821, a Yoruba boy named Ajayi was captured by slave raiders from his hometown of Osogun. Four decades later, he was consecrated a bishop in Canterbury Cathedral.

Ajayi was sold and resold, and in 1822 he was put on a Portuguese slave ship bound for the Americas. A British naval patrol, enforcing the ban on the slave trade, intercepted the ship, and the captives were taken to Freetown, Sierra Leone, the settlement for freed Africans.

Education

In Freetown, Ajayi was cared for by missionaries of the Church Missionary Society. He learned to read, was baptised in 1825 and took the name Samuel Crowther, after a clergyman in England. He was among the first students of Fourah Bay College, which opened in 1827, and he became a teacher.

The Niger expeditions

Crowther took part in the British expedition up the Niger River in 1841. He was ordained in England in 1843 and went to work as a missionary in Abeokuta, among the Yoruba. There he was reunited with his mother and sister, whom he had not seen since his capture, and his mother was later baptised.

The Yoruba Bible

Crowther worked for years on the Yoruba language, producing a grammar and vocabulary and translating the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. His work helped standardise written Yoruba, and the Yoruba Bible is still read in churches today.

Bishop

In 1864, Crowther was consecrated in Canterbury Cathedral as Bishop of the Niger, making him the first African bishop of the Anglican Church. He led missions along the Niger and trained African clergy. His son, Dandeson Coates Crowther, followed him into the ministry and later became an archdeacon in the Niger Delta.

His later years were difficult. Younger European missionaries criticised his administration and the conduct of some African clergy, and there were disputes over authority. After his death in 1891, a European was appointed to succeed him, a decision many Africans saw as racial prejudice and one that fed the growth of independent African churches.

Legacy

Historians now largely agree that Crowther was treated unfairly in his last years. Nigerian Anglicans honour him as a founding father of their church, which is now one of the largest in the Anglican Communion.

He began as a captive on a slave ship. He ended his life as a bishop whose translation still carries the Bible to millions of Yoruba speakers.