Appendix C: Chronology of the Life and Times of Samuel Ajayi Crowther

“So teach us to number our days, That we may get us a heart of wisdom.”

— Psalm 90:12, ASV

The dates below are meant as orientation. Dates taken from Crowther’s own letters and journals, or confirmed by the missionary society’s records, are given plainly. Where the sources disagree, the disagreement is noted. Dates given only by Jesse Page are followed unless they are plainly wrong.

c. 1807 - Birth

Ajayi is born at Osogun, in the Oyo country of the Yoruba, in what is now south-western Nigeria. The year is unknown. Estimates range from about 1802 (his gravestone) to about 1810; this book follows the common estimate of about 1807. His mother, Ibisomi, bore the title Afala.

1821 - Captured

Early in the year, as he dated it, Osogun is attacked by raiders in the wars that follow the collapse of the Oyo empire. He is enslaved and passed from owner to owner, and eventually sold to Portuguese slavers at Lagos.

7 April 1822 - Rescued

The slave ship carrying him is stopped off Lagos by HMS Myrmidon and HMS Iphigenia of the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron.

17 June 1822 - Sierra Leone

He is landed at Freetown and sent to the mission village of Bathurst, under Mr. Davey. Mrs. Weeks, the wife of a missionary, teaches him.

11 December 1825 - Baptism

Baptised Samuel Crowther by the Rev. J. Raban.

1826-1827 - England

He visits England with the Daveys and attends the parish school in Liverpool Road, Islington.

1827 - Fourah Bay

He becomes, as tradition records, the first student entered at the new Christian Institution at Fourah Bay, Freetown.

21 September 1829 - Marriage

He marries Asano, baptised Susan Thompson, a Yoruba girl freed from another slave ship in October 1822.

1829-1841 - Teacher

Schoolmaster at Regent and Wellington; from 1834 a tutor at Fourah Bay. In February 1837 he writes the letter describing his capture and rescue.

1841 - The Niger Expedition

He sails as a catechist with J. F. Schön on the government expedition up the Niger. Forty-two Europeans die within about two months. At Fernando Po on 2 November he writes that Africa can chiefly be benefited “by her own Children.”

1842-1843 - Ordination

He studies at the Church Missionary College, Islington. His Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language is published. He is made deacon by the Bishop of London on 11 June 1843, and ordained priest in October.

December 1843 - Return to Africa

He lands at Freetown on 2 December 1843 and preaches his first sermon in Africa the next day. On 9 January 1844 he leads the first public service in Yoruba.

17 January 1845 - Badagry

He reaches Badagry with Henry Townsend and C. A. Gollmer.

August 1846 - Abeokuta

He enters Abeokuta on 3 August. On 21 August he is reunited with his mother after twenty-five years.

February 1848 - His Mother’s Baptism

His mother is baptised Hannah, among the first converts of the Abeokuta mission. Sources give the day as 5 or 6 February.

1851 - England Again

He meets Lord Palmerston, and on 18 November is received at Windsor by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and recites the Lord’s Prayer in Yoruba. In December the Royal Navy attacks Lagos.

1854 - The Pleiad

He sails with Dr. W. B. Baikie up the Niger and the Benue. The voyage returns on 4 November without a single death.

1857 - The Dayspring

He sails on 29 June to found the Niger Mission, with an all-African staff. Onitsha is reached on 26 July and a station founded. On 7 October the Dayspring is wrecked near Jebba, and the party is stranded for a year.

14 September 1862 - First Fruits

The first baptisms of the Niger Mission, at Gbebe near the Confluence.

29 June 1864 - Consecration

Consecrated in Canterbury Cathedral as bishop of “the countries of Western Africa beyond the limits of our dominions,” after receiving the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Oxford. He holds his first ordination at Lagos on 22 August, and begins the mission at Bonny.

1866 - The First Charge

His first charge to his clergy is printed in London. Further charges follow in 1869, 1874, and 1885.

1867 - A Year of Troubles

Easter Day: the chiefs of Bonny renounce the worship of the sacred lizard. In September he and Dandeson are held for ransom by Abokko near Idda; on 28 September they escape, and William Fell is mortally wounded. In October the missionaries are expelled from Abeokuta.

19 June 1870 - Dandeson Ordained

He ordains his son Dandeson deacon at St. Mary’s, Islington.

1873 - Death of Henry Venn

Venn, his friend and patron, dies.

1875-1876 - Igbo and the Delta

He chooses the Isuama dialect as the standard for Igbo translation. Dandeson becomes Archdeacon of the Lower Niger (1876 in modern accounts; Stock gives 1878). King Ockiya of Brass gives up his household gods.

c. 1877 - Crime at Onitsha

A girl dies after cruel treatment by two African employees of the mission, one of them a dismissed teacher whom the bishop had re-employed. The case comes to trial in 1882.

11 June 1877 - Royal Geographical Society

He reads a paper on the Niger to the Society in London.

1878 - The Henry Venn

The mission steamer arrives, with J. H. Ashcroft as lay agent in charge of the mission’s business affairs.

1879 - Brass and Onitsha

Onitsha is shelled and burned by HMS Pioneer in October. King Ockiya of Brass is baptised on Advent Sunday.

1880 - Wood’s Report; Susan’s Death

J. B. Wood reports unfavourably on the mission. Susan Crowther dies at Lagos on 19 October, after fifty-one years of marriage.

1881 - Madeira

A conference at Madeira agrees reforms, including an English secretary to live on the Niger.

1882 - Phillips

He ordains Thomas Phillips priest in England, the first ordination of an Englishman by an African bishop. In September the London papers report the conviction at Sierra Leone in the Onitsha case.

1883 - Attacks and Losses

On 26 February he writes his “Caleb” letter from Bonny. On 12 April the Duke of Somerset attacks the society in the House of Lords. Several agents are let go. His mother dies at Lagos in October.

1884 - The Yoruba Bible

The complete Bible in Yoruba is published. In January and February he writes the letters “I know my place as negro” and “I am ready to yield place to others”; the society declines. In December the society protests to the Foreign Office against the liquor trade.

1886 - The Royal Niger Company

The British trading firms on the Niger are chartered as the Royal Niger Company.

1887 - Robinson

J. A. Robinson becomes secretary of the Niger Mission.

1890 - The Crisis

On 20 January, at Exeter Hall, he blesses the new missionaries; all sail in February. In August, at a committee meeting at Onitsha, African agents and clergy are dismissed or suspended, among them Archdeacon Dandeson Crowther. The bishop withdraws from the committee.

January 1891 - The Report

The society’s report confirms some suspensions and reverses others, admits inadequate supervision, and declares the situation on the Niger “extremely lamentable.”

1891 - Stroke

Robinson dies in June. In the summer the bishop suffers a stroke at Bonny. He moves to Lagos, arriving on 28 September, and stays with his daughter Abigail Macaulay. The Delta churches decline further money from the society and ask to become a self-supporting pastorate; the bishop forwards their request with his approval.

31 December 1891 - Death

He dies at Lagos, at a quarter to one in the morning according to his daughter’s account, which would strictly make the date 1 January 1892. He is buried on 1 January beside his wife and mother.

29 April 1892 - The Delta Pastorate

The self-supporting Niger Delta Pastorate is inaugurated at Bonny.

1893-1894 - The Successor

Joseph Sidney Hill is consecrated Bishop in Western Equatorial Africa on 29 June 1893, with Charles Phillips and Isaac Oluwole as African assistant bishops. Hill dies at Lagos in January 1894.

1896 - The Pastorate Constitution

A formal constitution settles the Delta Pastorate as a self-supporting branch of the Church of England.

4 August 1898 - Memorial

A marble monument is unveiled over his grave at Lagos.

1938 - Death of Dandeson

Archdeacon Dandeson Coates Crowther dies at Freetown.

2014 - Repentance

At a service of thanksgiving and repentance in Canterbury Cathedral, 150 years after the consecration, Archbishop Justin Welby says of Crowther’s treatment: “It was wrong.”