People, Independence & Pan-AfricanismFantedocumented history
The Man Who Preached at the Castle for Fifty Years
Philip Quaque was born at Cape Coast around 1741, son of a local caboceer, and was sent to England as a boy by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to be made into a clergyman.
Cape Coast Castle. He is buried in the courtyard.
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The Man Who Preached at the Castle for Fifty Years
Philip Quaque was born at Cape Coast around 1741, son of a local caboceer, and was sent to England as a boy by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to be made into a clergyman.
He was. In 1765 he was ordained in the Church of England — the first African to be, anywhere — and he was sent home as missionary, catechist and schoolmaster to the Gold Coast, with an English wife, at the castle.
He served for over fifty years.
The complication is the whole point of him. His congregation was the garrison of a slave-trading fort. He preached above the dungeons. He baptised the children of European officers by African women. He ran a school that educated a generation of the Cape Coast elite — including men who would later matter enormously in Fante politics. He wrote long, careful, frustrated letters back to London for half a century, and they survive, and they are the fullest African-authored record of daily life inside that castle that exists.
He had forgotten most of his Fante when he arrived and had to relearn it. He buried two wives. He is in the courtyard, under a stone, and thousands of people walk past him every week on their way down to the dungeon.
If you visit Ghana. Cape Coast Castle. He is buried in the courtyard.
Philip Quaque was born at Cape Coast around 1741, son of a local caboceer, and was sent to England as a boy by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to be made into a clergyman.
He was. In 1765 he was ordained in the Church of England — the first African to be, anywhere — and he was sent home as missionary, catechist and schoolmaster to the Gold Coast, with an English wife, at the castle.
He served for over fifty years.
The complication is the whole point of him. His congregation was the garrison of a slave-trading fort. He preached above the dungeons. He baptised the children of European officers by African women. He ran a school that educated a generation of the Cape Coast elite — including men who would later matter enormously in Fante politics. He wrote long, careful, frustrated letters back to London for half a century, and they survive, and they are the fullest African-authored record of daily life inside that castle that exists.
He had forgotten most of his Fante when he arrived and had to relearn it. He buried two wives. He is in the courtyard, under a stone, and thousands of people walk past him every week on their way down to the dungeon.