Bishop ajayi crowther biography pdf

Samuel Adjai (or Ajayi) Crowther was the first bishop of Niger and the first Black bishop in the Anglican Church. As a teen, he was abducted into slavery then traded and sold a number of times before being rescued by Anglican missionaries.

He went on to become an explorer, translator, and abolitionist.

Crowther was born into a prominent family in the western Nigerian village of Osogun, part of the Yoruba tribe. In 1821 his village was raided, and Crowther was captured into slavery, eventually ending up on a Portuguese slave ship in nearby Lagos.

Samuel ajayi crowther family tree

A British vessel, on the lookout for slave trafficking, intercepted the ship and freed the slaves including Crowther. They were transported to Freetown, Sierra Leone, a British colony established as a rescue home for liberated Africans.

It was there that Crowther, under the supervision of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, was educated and baptized.

In 1841 Crowther was invited by the British Society for the Extinction of the Slave Tr