Lewis Penick Clinton (also known as Louis Penick Clinton and Prince Somayou Zea Clayou) (born 1865 or 1866) was a Prince of the Bassa people in West Africa (Liberia) and later an African American missionary and lecturer. [1]
Lewis Penick Clinton (also known as Louis Penick Clinton and Prince Somayou Zea Clayou) (born 1865 or 1866) was a Prince of the Bassa people in West Africa (Liberia) and later an African American missionary and lecturer. [1]
Clinton was born as Prince Somayou Zea Clayou in 1865 or 1866 in Grand Bassa where he was heir to the throne of his grandfather, Zea, the king of the Bassa, a large tribe of two million people in West Africa. [2] Somayou's father was also a king and Somayou's mother was his father's favorite wife. [2] A rival uncle was seeking the throne, but Somayou was being trained secretly to be a successor until his father died in 1878. Fearing for his life, Somayou fled to the Liberian coast and met an American trader named Clinton, who taught Somayou English. Somayou then was introduced to an Episcopal bishop along the road between Cape Palmas to Cape Mount. The bishop, Lewis Penick, was on his way to found a mission station and Somayou worked with the bishop for five years and adopted the name "Lewis Penick Clinton." [2] [3]
In 1884 seeking to further his education, Clinton came to the U.S. and studied at Storer College in West Virginia for five years starting in the 1880s. [4] By 1890 Clinton had moved to Maine where he completed one year at Nichols Latin School and then attended Bates College and its affiliated Cobb Divinity School for six years. [5] He graduated from Bates College's Cobb Divinity School in 1897 with high honors. [1] While at Bates, Clinton was a member of the Polymnian debating society and active in social events and sports, including tennis, and he wrote for the Bates Student . [6] [7] He paid for his education expenses through lecturing and writing. [1] Clinton acquired knowledge of many languages including English, French, German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Bassa, Kru, and Vai. [8] [9]
In 1898 Clinton was ordained as a Free Will Baptist minister, and he returned to Africa in 1899 to found a mission near Fortsville in Grand Bassa, Liberia helping to educate local men and women and to hopefully regain the throne from his uncle. [10] His mission work was sponsored by the Free Will Baptists in Maine, and Clinton founded a mission station and farm (seventy-five miles east of Monrovia and fifty miles from the coast) upon several hundred acres of land granted by the Bassa people and Liberian government, and he was later assisted by another Storer alumnus, Rev. A.K. Peabody. [11] [12] The mission grew to contain dormitories and farms, and provided agricultural, mechanical and spiritual training in English (because the Bassa written language had not yet been created and translated), and in addition to the native Bassa, many Americo-Liberians also sent their children to his school. [11] By 1917 the Northern Baptist Convention (formerly Free Will) sent Bates professor, Lyman Jordan, to formally dedicate the Bible Industrial Academy at the mission. [13] In 1910 Clinton temporarily returned to the United States to lecture about his work, including a talk the Baptists at Ocean Park, Maine [14] and another at Clark University in Massachusetts entitled "The Hinterland of Liberia." [15]
Free Will Baptists or Free Baptists are a group of General Baptist denominations of Christianity that teach free grace, free salvation and free will. The movement can be traced back to the 1600s with the development of General Baptism in England. Its formal establishment is widely linked to the English theologian, Thomas Helwys who led the Baptist movement to believe in general atonement. He was an advocate of religious liberty at a time when to hold to such views could be dangerous and punishable by death. He died in prison as a consequence of the religious persecution of Protestant dissenters under King James I.
The Nichols Latin School was a private college preparatory school that operated in the late 19th century to prepare students of both affluent and mixed income backgrounds. The Free Will Baptist school was linked with Bates College until its closing in 1899. A noted counter to schools like the Boston Latin School, it featured preparatory education for the youth of the northeastern areas of New England.
Cobb Divinity School was a Baptist theological institute. Founded in 1840, it was a Free Will Baptist graduate school affiliated with several Free Baptist institutions throughout its history. Cobb was part of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, United States from 1870 until 1908 when it merged with the college's Religion Department.
Parsonsfield Seminary, which operated from 1832 to 1949, was a well-known Free Will Baptist school in North Parsonsfield, Maine, in the United States. Also known as the North Parsonsfield Seminary, its preserved campus of four buildings is located on State Route 160 near the New Hampshire border. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Carl Elias Milliken was an American politician, and business executive. He served as the 51st Governor of Maine, and was the Chief Spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America.
George Colby Chase was an American intellectual and professor of English who served as the second President of Bates College succeeding its founder, Oren Burbank Cheney, from March 1894 to November 1919.
The Bates Student, established in 1873, is the newspaper of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, run entirely by students. It is one of the oldest continuously-published college weeklies in the United States and claims to be the oldest co-ed college weekly in the nation.
John Calvin Stevens was an American architect who worked in the Shingle Style, in which he was a major innovator, and the Colonial Revival style. He designed more than 1,000 buildings in the state of Maine.
Charles Edgar Littlefield was a United States representative from Maine.
John Jay Butler was an ordained minister and theologian in the early Free Will Baptist movement in New England, serving as Professor of Systematic Theology at Cobb Divinity School at Bates College in Maine and later at Hillsdale College in Michigan.
Alfred Williams Anthony was an American author, Freewill Baptist leader, and religion professor at Bates College in Maine.
Rev. Ransom Dunn, D.D. was an American minister and theologian, prominent in the early Free Will Baptist movement in New England. He was President of Rio Grande College in Ohio, and Hillsdale College in Michigan. A Discourse on the Freedom of the Will is one of his most notable works.
Clinton Caldwell Boone was an African-American Baptist minister, physician, dentist, and medical missionary who served in the Congo Free State and Liberia. The son of Rev. Lemuel Washington Boone and Charlotte (Chavis) Boone of Hertford County, North Carolina, he played an important role in Africa as a missionary for the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention and the American Baptist Missionary Union, now American Baptist International Ministries.
The history of Bates College began shortly before Bates College's founding on March 16, 1855, in Lewiston, Maine. The college was founded by Oren Burbank Cheney and Benjamin Bates. Originating as a Free Will Baptist institution, it has since secularized and established a liberal arts curriculum. After the mysterious 1853 burning of Parsonsfield Seminary, Cheney wanted to create another seminary in a more central part of Maine: Lewiston, a then-booming industrial economy. He met with religious and political leaders in Topsham, to discuss the formation of such a school, recruiting much of the college's first trustees, most notably Ebenezer Knowlton. After a well-received speech by Cheney, the group successfully petitioned the Maine State Legislature to establish the Maine State Seminary. At its founding it was the first coeducational college in New England. Soon after it was established, donors stepped forward to finance the seminary, developing the school in an affluent residential district of Lewiston. The college struggled to finance its operations after the financial crisis of 1857, requiring extra capital to remain afloat. Cheney's political activities attracted Benjamin Bates, who was interested in fostering his business interests in Maine. Bates donated installments of tens of thousands of dollars to the college to bring it out of the crisis.
Nathan Cook Brackett (1836–1910) was an abolitionist, Free Will Baptist pastor, first president of Storer College, and chairman and co-founder of Bluefield State College.
Stella James Sims (1875-1963) was an African-American science professor who held positions at Storer College, Virginia University of Lynchburg, and Bluefield Colored Institute.
George Harvey Ball (1819–1907) was an American academic, pastor, writer, and founder of Keuka College in New York.
John Fullonton (1812-1896) was an American pastor, academic and legislator.
George T. Day (1822–1875) was a Free Will Baptist writer, publisher, pastor and professor.
Benjamin Francis Hayes (1830-1906) was a Free Will Baptist pastor, author, principal of the Lapham Institute, and early professor at Bates College in Maine.