Ajayi crowther biography of william shakespeare

African missionary and bishop

Crowther was born with the name Ajayi in Osogun, in the Egba section of the Yoruba people, in what is now western Nigeria.

When about 13, he was taken as a slave by Fulani and Yoruba Muslim raiders and sold several times before being purchased by Portuguese traders for the transatlantic market. His ship was intercepted by the British navy’s anti-slave trade patrol, and the slaves were liberated in Sierra Leone.

Ajayi crowther biography of william shakespeare in 400 words

There he became a Christian, taking at baptism the name of an eminent clergyman in England, Samuel Crowther. Excelling at school, he became a mission teacher and one of the first students of the Fourah Bay Institution, founded by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1827 to train able Sierra Leoneans for Christian service.

He assisted John Raban and (probably) Hannah Kilham in their studies of African languages, and in 1841 he joined J.F. Schön as a CMS representative on T.F. Buxton‘