The library and archives of the Methodist Missionary Society

Extract

Methodist missionary work overseas began in 1786. The first missionaries to be sent out from this country went to Canada and the West Indies however, and it was not until 1811 that the first Methodist mission was set up in Africa. This mission was located at newly established Freetown in Sierra Leone. Three years later other Methodists were active in Cape Colony on the southern tip of the continent and the Wesleyan Missionary Society's two major fields of missionary activity in Africa, the West Coast and Southern Africa, had been defined. From Freetown the Society's influence spread to Bathurst on the Gambia River in 1821, Cape Coast on the Gold Coast in 1835 and in 1854 to the old slaving port of Lagos. From Cape Coast the mission spread inland to Ashanti and from Lagos Island into Yorubaland. By 1905 there were over 1,000 Methodist chapels and 19 expatriate Methodist missionaries scattered throughout West Africa.