Mission
Van Cooten was known for his Christian character and desire to help others. [2] He felt a call to serve after talking to Emily Primrose, [4] a young lady from Suffolk, England, whose sister was under his care. [2]
He married Emily at the Church of England in Ipswick, Suffolk, London on October 11, 1849. [4] He traveled to Badagry, Yoruba, Nigeria with Emily, Mr. and Mrs. Gollmer, Mr. and Mrs. Townsend, and Mr. and Mrs. Huber in March 1850. [4] [7]
The Yoruba mission was founded in 1844 when Samuel Crowther, Mr. Gollmer, and Rev. Henry Townsend were travelling to Abeokuta. On their journey, they received news that the individual who would welcome them to the Abeokuta mission had passed. [8] Thus the party stayed in Badagry, where they eventually established a mission. Mr. Gollmer remained with the Badagry mission. [8]
Samuel Crowther, was a Yoruba linguist, clergyman, and the first African Anglican bishop of West Africa. Born in Osogun, he and his family were captured by Fulani slave raiders when he was about twelve years old. This took place during the Yoruba civil wars, notably the Owu wars of 1821–1829, where his village Osogun was ransacked. Ajayi was later on resold to Portuguese slave dealers, where he was put on board to be transported to the New World through the Atlantic.
Henry Townsend (1815–1886) was an Anglican missionary in Nigeria.
The Church Mission Society (CMS), formerly known as the Church Missionary Society, is a British Anglican mission society working with Christians around the world. Founded in 1799, CMS has attracted over nine thousand men and women to serve as mission partners during its 200-year history. The society has also given its name "CMS" to a number of daughter organisations around the world, including Australia and New Zealand, which have now become independent.
Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle or Kölle was a German missionary working on behalf of the London-based Church Missionary Society, at first in Sierra Leone, where he became a pioneer scholar of the languages of Africa, and later in Constantinople (Istanbul). He published a major study in 1854, Polyglotta Africana, marking the beginning of serious study by Europeans of African languages.
Akitoye, sometimes wrongly referred to as Akintoye, reigned twice as Oba of Lagos; first, from 1841 to 1845, and a second time, from 1851 to 1853. His father was Oba Ologun Kutere and his siblings were Obas Osinlokun and Adele.
Thomas Birch Freeman was an Anglo-African Wesleyan minister, missionary, botanist and colonial official in West Africa. He is widely regarded as a pioneer of the Methodist Church in colonial West Africa, where he also established multiple schools. Some scholars view him as the "Founder of Ghana Methodism". Freeman's missionary activities took him to Dahomey, now Benin, as well as to Western Nigeria.
Rev. Robert Warren Stewart was an Irish missionary of the Church Missionary Society, London, stationed at different times in Australia, India. and Fuzhou, China, where he was martyred.
James Long (1814–1887) was an Anglo-Irish priest of the Anglican Church. A humanist, educator, evangelist, translator, essayist, philanthropist and a missionary to India, he resided in the city of Calcutta, India, from 1840 to 1872 as a member of the Church Missionary Society, leading the mission at Thakurpukur.
Badagry, also spelled Badagri, is a coastal town and Local Government Area (LGA) in Lagos State, Nigeria. It is quite close to the city of Lagos, and located on the north bank of Porto Novo Creek, an inland waterway that connects Lagos to the Beninese capital of Porto-Novo. The same route connects Lagos, Ilaro, and Porto-Novo, and shares a border with the Republic of Benin. As of the preliminary 2006 census results, the municipality had a population of 241,093.
Frederick Augustus Klein (1827–1903), or F. A. Klein as he is called in much of the literature, was a Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionary in the Middle East. He is remembered for his 1868 discovery of the Moabite Stone, which dates from about 840 B.C. It gives qualified confirmation of some events mentioned in the biblical Book of Kings.
The Ecclesiastical Province of Lagos is one of the 14 ecclesiastical provinces of the Church of Nigeria. It comprises 13 dioceses:
The New Zealand Church Missionary Society (NZCMS) is a mission society working within the Anglican Communion and Protestant, Evangelical Anglicanism. The parent organisation was founded in England in 1799. The Church Missionary Society (CMS) sent missionaries to settle in New Zealand. The Rev. Samuel Marsden, the Society's Agent and the Senior Chaplain to the New South Wales government, officiated at its first service on Christmas Day in 1814, at Oihi Bay in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand.
Archdeacon Dandeson Coates Crowther was a son of Archbishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther and a leader of the Anglican Church in West Africa. He was born in Sierra Leone. He was a part of the Christian Missionary Society (CMS) in 1870 and titled as "Archdeacon" of the Niger Delta in 1876. He is credited with initiating the "mass movement" towards Christianity in the 1870s and ultimately the first African secession from the Anglican Church when he founded the Niger Delta Pastorate.
Nathaniel Thomas King was one of the earliest western-trained West African doctors to practise medicine in Nigeria.
Kosoko was a member of the Ologun Kutere Lagos Royal Family who reigned as Oba of Lagos from 1845 to 1851. His father was Oba Osinlokun and his siblings were Idewu Ojulari, Olufunmi, Odunsi, Ladega, Ogunbambi, Akinsanya, Ogunjobi, Akimosa, Ibiyemi, Adebajo, Matimoju, Adeniyi, Isiyemi, Igbalu, Oresanya, and Idewu-Ojulari.
The Church Missionary Society in India was a branch organisation established by the Church Missionary Society (CMS), which was founded in Britain in 1799 under the name the Society for Missions to Africa and the East, as a mission society working with the Anglican Communion, other Protestants, and Orthodox Christians around the world. In 1812, the British organization was renamed the Church Missionary Society.
Thomas Jefferson Bowen (1814–1875) was an American expatriate Baptist missionary who spent considerable time of his missionary activities in Ijaye, Ogbomosho and a few other towns within the present Oyo State. His work established the foundation of the Baptist mission in Nigeria. Bowen's intention to proselytize to Africans in the interior in particular the Fulanis was stopped by the Emir of Ilorin, Bowen then concentrated his effort in Yorubaland until his return to America. While in the U.S., he began to promote the creation of an America colony of free blacks in Africa.
The Anglican Diocese of Lagos is one of 13 dioceses within the Anglican Province of Lagos, itself one of 14 provinces within the Church of Nigeria. The current bishop is Ifedola Senasu Gabriel Okupevi who succeeded the late Humphrey Bamisebi Olumakaiye.
Chief Theophilus Olabode Avoseh, known as T. Ola Avoseh, was a local historian, writer and chief of Badagry, Lagos. He wrote several booklets and pamphlets in the English and Yoruba languages on aspects of the history and culture of Badagry and Epe towns in Lagos, Nigeria.
The First Christian Missionary Cemetery in Nigeria, also known as the Early Christian Missionary Cemetery in Badagry, is a graveyard where 19th- and 20th-century European Christian Missionaries who died in Badagry town and its environs were buried. The burial site in located along the town's General Hospital Road. It's Plus Code coordinates on Google Maps is CV7Q+CPR, 103101, Badagry, Nigeria. Some record say that over 200 missionaries were buried here. An obelisk was erected in memory of the dead missionaries. Today, the cemetery is one of the historical sites that attract tourists into Badagry town.
