ALL ABOUT 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. He and his family were captured by Fulani slave raiders when he was about 12 years old. The family was captured during the Yoruba Civil Wars of 1821-1829, where his village, Osogun was ransacked. The Fulani slave raiders sold him to Portuguese slaves traders where he was put on board a ship to be transported to their colonies in the Americas. 

Before the slave ship would depart, it was intercepted by a British Royal Navy ship which was enforcing the British ban against the Atlantic slave trade. The British outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 and used their navy to patrol the coast of Africa. During that period, Spain and Portugal still allowed the Atlantic slave trade in their colonies in the Americas. The Royal Navy ship patrol team freed the captives and took Ajayi and his family to Freetown, Sierra Leone where they were resettled by local authorities.

While in Sierra Leone, Crowther was cared for by the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) and was

taught English. Due to his remarkable intellectual qualities, he was sent to school and within a short time, he was able to read the bible with ease. He then converted to Christianity. On 11,  December 1825, he was baptized by John Raban, naming himself after Samuel Crowther, one of the pioneers of the CMS. Crowther became interested in Languages. In 1826, he was taken to England to attend the school of St. Mary's Church in Islington, an Anglican missionary school.

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. Temne is one of Sierra Leone's most widely spoken languages. After completing his studies, he began teaching at the school. In 1843, he traveled back to England where he was ordained a priest and selected for the CMS project in the Yoruba mission. He and Henry Townsend returned to Africa in the same 1843 and opened a mission in Abeokuta, in today's Ogun state, Nigeria. Crowther began translating the Bible into Yoruba language. He also compiled a Yoruba dictionary, and a book containing a large number of local proverbs, published in London in 1852.

Ajayi Crowther married a school mistress originally named Asano but baptized as Susan. Susan was a former Muslim who was also liberated from the same Portuguese slave ship with Crowther. She was among the captives resettled in Sierra Leone where she converted to Christianity. One of their children included Dandeson Coates Crowther, who 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 a bishop on St. Peter's day by Charles Longley, the Archbishop of Canterbury at Canterbury cathedral. His consecration was lincensed by Queen Victoria and this authorized and empowered him "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 the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Oxford.

He later met Queen Victoria and read the Lord's prayer to her in Yoruba, which she described as soft and melodious. In March 1881, Crowther began to work in languages other than Yoruba, but he continued to supervise the translation of the Yoruba Bible, which was completed in the mid-1880s, a few years before his death. Crowther is celebrated with a feast on the liturgical calendar of some Anglican churches, including the Church of Nigeria on 31 of every December. He died of a stroke in Lagos on 31 December 1891 at age 82. He was buried at Ajele Cemetery in Lagos.