Alfred Saker

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Alfred James Lymmonds Saker (born July 21, 1814 in Borough Green , Wrotham , Kent , England , † March 12, 1880 in Peckham , London ), was the first English Baptist missionary in Cameroon in 1845 . Because he was expelled from the island of Bioko by the Spaniards in 1853 , he founded the village of Victoria in 1858 with freed African slaves . He trained local professionals and he translated the Bible into the local language Duala , which was printed in Victoria in 1872.

Life

Saker's father was a mill builder and engineer who died in 1838 when his son was 24 years old. Alfred had many siblings, but he was the only child in the family to attend the state village school, where he found his joy in reading and books. He then went into his father's business, and by the time he was 16 he had built a small steam engine. He began attending the local Baptist Church, and when he was 20 he was baptized there and became an active member of that church. He evangelized in the local area and also worked as a lay preacher in Plaxtol .

After his father's death in 1838 he found work in the port of Devonport , where he could make drawings for the Navy. In 1839 he went to Deptford , where he had to oversee the construction of the ship's engines. In February 1840 he married Helen Jessup in St. Marys, Newington , London, and they resided in Devonport, where they attended Morice Square Baptist Church. His wife shared his desire to go to Africa as a missionary. So they were accepted by the committee of the Baptist Missionary Society , he as a missionary assistant and engineer.

Shortly before Saker, in 1843, following the liberation of slaves in Jamaica, the first missionaries of the Jamaican Baptist Mission came to the Spanish-ruled island of Fernando Póo, which is now called Bioko and lies off Cameroon. Saker himself came to this island in 1844 shortly after Joseph Merrick († 1849) and Joseph Jackson Fuller (1825-1908). Just one year later, in 1845, he was able to establish a mission station on the mainland at the mouth of the Wouri River near what is now the city of Douala . He learned the native Duala language , wrote school books, began translating the Bible, preached the gospel and also taught some Africans carpentry and agriculture. In 1850 he returned to Fernando Póo.

In 1853, at the instigation of Jesuit missionaries, the Spanish government decided that Protestant services were forbidden on the island and that Baptists had to leave the island. With around 90 local Baptists, Saker first went to Amboises Bay on the mainland. In 1858 he received a 16 by 8 kilometer piece of land from the local King William of Bimbia, and there he built Victoria (today's Limbe ) as a new permanent mission station and village with his mostly freed slaves . It included a school, a church, other buildings and gardens. He also trained local pastors, tailors, shoemakers, bricklayers and carpenters there who helped him build the Bethel Church in 1860. In Victoria in 1872 he had 200 Bibles printed in the duala language on his own printing press. Saker returned to England in 1876, where he spent the last years of his life.

In 1886, one year after the German occupation of Cameroon, the last British missionaries left Victoria and the Basel Mission took over this station.

Honors

On the beach of Limbe there is a memorial with a picture of Alfred Saker and the following inscription:

Alfred Saker, Missionary to Africa, who landed, founded and named the Township Victoria. Tablet erected in memory of his devoted work to mark the Centenary of Victoria, 1858-1958. (German: Alfred Saker, missionary in Africa, who arrived here and founded the Victoria settlement. Plaque commemorating his work on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Victoria, 1858–1958. )

The Saker Baptist College and the Baptist Church in Limbe are named after him.

In Douala, both the Alfred Saker College and a Baptist church bear his name.

literature

  • Edward Bean Underhill: Alfred Saker (1814–1880), missionary to Africa - a biography , Baptist Missionary Society, London 1884 and Cardy Kingsgate Press, London 1958
  • Emily Martha Ashfield Saker: Alfred Saker The Pioneer of the Cameroons , Religious Tract Society, London 1908, ISBN 1 175 69259 X (written by Saker's daughter)
  • Jaap Van Slageren: Les origines de l'Église évangélique du Cameroun
  • Ype Schaaf: L'histoire et le rôle de la Bible en Afrique , CETA, HAHO et CLE, Lavigny 2000, ISBN 9-966-886-72-9 , pp. 60-63

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ype Schaaf: L'histoire et le rôle de la Bible en Afrique , CETA, HAHO et CLE, Lavigny 2000, ISBN 9-966-886-72-9 , pp. 60-63
  2. ↑ http://franklinyamsi.com/contents/fr/d3573013.html
  3. ↑ https://www.gpenreformation.net/de/members/college-alfred-saker/ Collège Alfred Saker
  4. ↑ http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll123/id/54960 Old Church Alfred Saker in Douala, in Cameroon
personal data
SURNAME Saker, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alfred James Lymmonds Saker (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Baptist missionary, Bible translator in Duala, and village founder of Victoria, Cameroon
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1814
PLACE OF BIRTH Borough Green , Wrotham , Kent , England
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1880
Place of death Peckham , London