Thomas Birch Freeman, Son of an African

Thomas Birch Freeman [1806-1890] was a English Wesleyan Missionary to the Gold Coast of West Africa (Modern Benin, Ghana, Toga and Western Nigeria). His father was African and his mother English. The Evangelical Dictionary of Christian Missions notes that:

Freeman was instrumental in starting churches and schools throughout two great African kingdoms, the Ashanti and the Dahomey, where the gospel was unknown. While he never learned the local language, he made friends of powerful Africans who said, “He understands our customs.” He was the first missionary to visit the great cities of gold, He also observed the brutal atrocities of the slave trade that he fought. He was a peacemaker among Africans and between England and African kingdoms. [p.372]

My thanks to Redcliffe College for providing a copy of this book for digitisation. This book is in the public domain. Further bibliographic resources on this missionary can be found on this page.

F. Deaville Walker [1878-1945], Thomas Birch Freeman. The Son of an African. London: Student Christian Movement, [1929]. Hbk. pp.221. [Click to download the complete book in PDF]

Contents

• Author’s Preface
• Map

1. The Son of an African
2. The Call of Africa
3. Outward Bound
4. The Gold Coast When Freeman Landed
5. The Valley of the Shadow of Death
6. Establishing rthe Gold Coast Mission
7. Through the Forest to Kumasi
8. Received by the Ashanti King
9. In the City of Blood
10. A Year of Hard Work
11. Five Months in England
12. New Hopes, New Sorrows
13. Clearing a Path Through the Primeval Forest
14. Planting the Church in Kumasi
15. Progress and Trials
16. To the Slave Coast and Abeokuta
17. With the King of the Dahomey
18. Fourteen Busy Years
19. Sixteen Years in Retirement
20. Freeman in Old Age Returns to the Work

• An Epilogue
• Index