Samuel Ajayi Crowther: The First African Anglican Bishop of West Africa

Samuel Ajayi Crowther was a Yoruba linguist, clergyman, and the first African Anglican bishop of West Africa. He was born in 1809 in Osogun, in what is now Oyo State, Nigeria. At about 12 years old, he and his family were captured by Fulani slave raiders during the Yoruba Civil Wars of 1821–1829, when his village, Osogun, was ransacked. The raiders sold him to Portuguese slave traders, who placed him on a ship bound for the Americas.

Before the slave ship could depart, it was intercepted by a British Royal Navy vessel enforcing the British ban on the Atlantic slave trade. The British had outlawed the trade in 1807 and patrolled the West African coast to enforce the ban. At the time, Spain and Portugal still allowed the slave trade in their American colonies. The Royal Navy freed the captives and took Ajayi and his family to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where local authorities resettled them.

While in Sierra Leone, Crowther came under the care of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) and was taught English. Due to his remarkable intellect, he was sent to school and, within a short time, was able to read the Bible with ease. He then converted to Christianity and, on December 11, 1825, was baptized by John Raban, taking the name Samuel Crowther after one of the pioneers of the CMS.

Crowther developed a keen interest in languages. In 1826, he traveled to England to attend St. Mary's Church School in Islington, an Anglican missionary institution. He returned to Freetown in 1827 and enrolled at the newly opened Fourah Bay College, an Anglican missionary school, where he studied Latin, Greek, and Temne, one of Sierra Leone's most widely spoken languages. After completing his studies, he began teaching at the school.

In 1843, Crowther traveled back to England, where he was ordained a priest and selected for the CMS Yoruba mission. That same year, he and Henry Townsend returned to Africa and opened a mission in Abeokuta, in present-day Ogun State, Nigeria. Crowther began translating the Bible into Yoruba and compiled a Yoruba dictionary, along with a book of Yoruba proverbs, which was published in London in 1852.

Ajayi Crowther married a schoolmistress originally named Asano, who was baptized as Susan. Susan, a former Muslim, had also been liberated from the same Portuguese slave ship as Crowther and was resettled in Sierra Leone, where she converted to Christianity. One of their children, Dandeson Coates Crowther, later entered the ministry and, in 1876, became the Archdeacon of the Niger Delta.

In 1864, Crowther was ordained as the first African bishop of the Anglican Church. He was consecrated on St. Peter’s Day by Charles Longley, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at Canterbury Cathedral. His consecration was licensed by Queen Victoria, authorizing and empowering him as "Bishop of the United Church of England and Ireland in the said countries in Western Africa beyond the limits of our dominions." He continued his studies and later received a Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Oxford.

During his time in England, Crowther met Queen Victoria and recited the Lord’s Prayer to her in Yoruba, which she described as soft and melodious. In March 1881, he expanded his linguistic work beyond Yoruba but continued to oversee the final stages of the Yoruba Bible translation, which was completed in the mid-1880s, a few years before his death.

Crowther is commemorated in the liturgical calendar of some Anglican churches, including the Church of Nigeria, which honors him on December 31. He passed away from a stroke in Lagos on December 31, 1891, at the age of 82. He was buried at Ajele Cemetery in Lagos.

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