T H OMAS BIRCH FREEMAN THOMAS BIRCH FREEMAN THE SON OF AN AFRICAN By F. DEAVILLE WALKER EDITOR oF The Foreign Field AuTHOR OF Africa and Her Peoples The Story of the Ivory Coast William Carey, etc. LONDON STUDENT CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 32 RUSSELL SQUARE, W.C.l TO THE AFRICAN MINISTERS MEMBERS .A.ND SCHOL.A.RS OF THE GOLD CO.A.ST WESLEY.A.N CHURCHES (ESPECIALLY AT CAPE COAST SALT POND, ACCRA, AND SEKONDI) ~ lDebtcate THIS BOOK IN AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE OF HAPPY DAYS SPENT AMONG THEM EDITORIAL NOTE Tms volume is the eighth of a uniform series of new missionary biographies, in the produc­ tion of which a group of unusually able writers are collaborating. While these volumes contain valuable new material, this is not their main objective. The aim rather is to give to the world of to-day a fresh interpretation and a richer understanding of the life and work of great missionaries. The enterprise is being undertaken by the United Council for Missionary Education, for whom the series is published by the Student Christian Movement. K.M. E. S. U.C.M.E. 2 EATON GATE S.W.l I AUTHOR'S PREFACE THOMAS BIRCH FREEMAN was the greatest pioneer missionary West Africa has ever known, and his period of service on the Coast was longer than that of any other--exceeding sixty-two years. In days when colleagues were dying around him one after another, he was the outstanding pioneer of mis­ sionary work on the Gold Coast. He was the first missionary to reach Kumasi (then known as "the City of Blood"), the first to visit the terrible King of Dahomey, the first to reach Abeokuta; and he planted the Wesleyan missions in Badagry, Whyda, and Lagos-then the chief strongholds of the slave traffic. The son of an African father and a white mother, he lived where others died, and at the close of his long life he preached the Jubilee sermons in the church he himself had built at Cape Coast. It is little short of tragic that such a man should be almost unknown to the home Churches, though his memory is still fragrant in West Africa.. To re­ introduce him to the Christian public at home is the object of this book, and it is hoped that the retell­ ing of the story may prove an inspiration and a call to service to not a few young men and women­ Africans as well as English-who are setting out on life's adventure. Hardly anything about Freeman is available for the general public. The Journal of his great 6 Author's Preface 7 journeys was published in abbreviated form in 1844; Missionary Notices, the monthly magazine of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, had fre­ quent articles about his work from 1839 to 1857. These have long been out of print and are practically unobtainable by the public. A· little eighteen-penny Life, by the Rev. John Milum, was published nearly forty years ago, and that also is now difficult to obtain. Fortunately the real sources of information have been preserved in manuscript, chiefly in the archives of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. They consist of some hundreds of original letters, journals, and reports to the committee, some of which run to fifty and even seventy quarto or foolscap sheets. I have carefully read through them, and also numerous letters from his fellow­ missionaries; and I have made full use of the manu­ script of a book which Freeman wrote in the 'sixties but did not publish. Very special thanks are due to Mr Thomas B. Freeman of Accra (Freeman's eldest son) for the loan of valuable MSS. and personal details about his father's life ; and also to the vener­ able " Father " Brown of Cape Coast, who for many years was closely associated with Freeman and frequently travelled with him. I have had the opportunity of visiting most of the important places connected with Freeman's life-Cape Coast, Anamabu, Accra, Christiansborg, Kumasi, Abomey, Whyda, Porto Novo, Lagos, and Abeokuta-and gained much information on the spot ; and I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness to all the missionaries and African ministers who most generously helped me in my quest. Nor must I forget Mr John Sharah, 8 Thomas Bz"rch Freeman an aged Ashanti, who was once an attendant upon the Ashanti kings, and remembered the old Kumasi before it was destroyed by Wolseley; he conducted me round the town and helped me mentally to recon­ struct it as Freeman saw it. My thanks, too, are due to several missionary veterans who knew Freeman in his old age-the Revs. W. Terry COppin, Dennis Kemp, George Dyer, Michael J. Elliott, and Thomas J. Price (in whose house Freeman died); all these, and also the Rev. Oliver J. Griffin, have helped by reading the MS. and by useful suggestions. To Mr Griffin and also to Mr Vivian Simpson I am indebted for useful documents from the archives of the Lagos District. The book makes no pretence to be a complete story of Freeman's long and eventful life-that would be impossible in the space allotted ; but I have striven to present the essential features. It is a life-story of a man, not the history of a mission, and I have tried to make it a portrait true to life. I take this opportunity of saying that my fairly exhaustive researches have shown Freeman to be an even greater man than I had previously supposed. l regard him as one of the outstanding pioneers of modern missionary enterprise. F. D. W. SIDCUl', KENT May 1929 CONTENTS CHAP, PAGJt AuTHOR's PREFACE 6 MAP 10 1. THE SoN oF AN AFRICAN 11 II. THE CALL OF AFRICA 16 III. 0UTWARD BOUND • 28 IV. THE GoLD CoAST WHEN FREEMAN LANDED 29 v. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 85 vi. EsTABLISHING THE GoLD CoAST MissiON 41 vn. THROUGH THE FoREST To KuMASI 55 VIII. RECEIVED BY THE ASHANTI KING 76 IX. IN THE CITY OF BLOOD 86 x. A YEAR OF liARD WORK 99 XI. FIVE MONTHS IN ENGLAND 104 XII. NEw HoPES, NEw SoRROWS 108 XIII. CLEARING A PATH THROUGH THE PRIMEVAL FoREST • 114 XIV. PLANTING THE CHURCH IN KuMASI. 121 xv. PROGRESS AND TRIALS • 140 XVI. To THE SLAVE CoAST AND ABEOKUTA 145 XVII. WITH THE KING OF DAHOMEY 160 XVIII. FouRTEEN BusY YEARS. 180 XIX, SIXTEEN YEARS IN RETIREMENT 201 XX, FREEMAN IN OLD AGE RETURNS TO THE WoRK 208 AN EPILOGUE 215 INDEX , 217 9 ID ::> a: 0 > )­ uJ ! 0 J: <( 0 CHAPTER I THE SON OF AN AFRICAN 1809-1837. Age 1 to 28. ONE bleak January morning in the year of grace 1810, a woman, Amy Birch by name, stood before the font of the parish church in the quaint village of Twyford, near Winchester. In her arms lay a baby boy a month old,1 brought for holy Baptism, and to him was given the name of Thomas. Amy Birch was a middle-aged English village woman of humble station, but the father of the boy was a swarthy son of Africa -a pure-blooded Negro. Concerning the circumstances that brought these two together-an Englishwoman and an African­ nothing is known. It has been surmised that they were fellow-servants to some country gentleman in Twyford. Nothing whatever is known about the father beyond the undoubted fact that he was a Negro and that his name was Thomas; his surname is uncertain. 2 How he came to England is a matter of conjecture. In the eighteenth century planters from the colonies came to England bringing with them a personal servant-a slave. But in 1772 Lord Chief Justice Mansfield gave his famous legal decision 1 The parish register gives the date of Freeman's birth as December 6th, 1809. 1 It may have been Freeman, but that name may have been adopted by his son, the subject of this sketch. 11 12 Thomas Bt'rch Freeman that " as soon as a slave sets his foot on English ground he becomes free," and those noble words marked the beginning of a new era in the relation of English people with Mricans. Immediately a number of slaves who were in this country claimed their freedom. Some of them obtained employ­ ment, often as gardeners or house servants. Such were the general conditions at the beginning of the nineteenth century. What light do they throw upon the father of Amy Birch's child ? Certainly he could not have been a slave when the boy was born. Had he ever been a slave? We do not know. If he had never been a stave, it is difficult to account for his presence in England-unless, indeed, he was the free-born son of a slave, which is quite possible. We are equally in the dark as to the early years of little Thomas. The parish registers tell us that his parents were poor, and we know that when Thomas was six years old his father died. The mother was left to fend for herself and four boys-Thomas being the youngest ; the other three were the children of Amy Birch and her first husband, John Birch, and were pure-blooded English boys, Thomas alone being . of mixed parentage. He was every inch a boy-im­ pulsive, full of life and mischief, and not easily turned from any purpose upon which his mind was set. He knew nothing of fear. While still a small child he used to frighten his mother by reckless efforts to climb a big tree in the cottage garden.