George Grenfell (August 21, 1849 – July 1, 1906) was a British missionary and explorer of the Cameroon and Congo areas of Middle Africa...
Early life edit
Grenfell was born the son of a carpenter at Sancreed, a village between Penzance and Land's End in Cornwall, UK. When he was three, the family moved to Birmingham and Grenfell was sent to King Edward's School in New Street. He and his brother also attended the Sunday school held at the Heneage Street Baptist Church. In 1864, aged fifteen, Grenfell was baptised as a full member of the congregation and around this time became apprenticed to a local hardware and machinery firm. There he learned much that would help him maintain and repair machinery out in Africa, but also suffered an accident that resulted in him losing the sight in one eye.
Grenfell joined a group of earnest young congregants at the Heneage Street church who would fill their Sundays with prayer, worship, evangelism and study. He became the editor of their newsletter, Mission Work. Eventually, aged twenty-four, he felt he had been called to be a missionary and enrolled at the Baptist College in Stokes Croft, Bristol. After a year's training, the Baptist Missionary Society accepted him for service in Africa.
Cameroon edit
Grenfell had been inspired by David Livingstone's and Alfred Saker's accounts of their travels in Africa; toward the end of 1874, he now found himself accompanying Saker on a voyage to Cameroon. They arrived in January 1875. Until his first period of leave, Grenfell worked with Saker in Cameroons Town (now Douala) and then returned to Birmingham to marry Mary Hawkes, the sister of a close friend, in the Heneage Street church. She accompanied him on his journey back to Cameroons Town in May 1876, only to die a few months later after giving birth to a stillborn child.
In the wake of this personal tragedy, Grenfell was joined by another young missionary, Thomas Comber. Together they began exploring the area around Cameroons Town, including the Wouri and Sanaga rivers as far as Edéa. During this time, Grenfell moved to Victoria (now Limbé), where he began a survey of the nearby Mount Cameroon.
At the beginning of 1878, Grenfell and Comber received an invitation from the Missionary Society to explore and establish a mission along the Congo River. Within a few days, they had boarded a Congo-bound mail steamer that was due to return to Cameroon a few weeks later. This gave them an excellent opportunity to reconnoitre the area.
By 1878 Grenfell had ... ascended the Mungo, Yabiang, Wuri, Lungasi, and Sanaga Rivers; he sent details of his journeys to the Royal Geographical Society.[3] [He had also surveyed Mount Cameroon from Victoria] [He sent his findings to the Royal Geographical Society, who published them and later [1887] awarded Grenfell its Patron's Medal in recognition of his work in Cameroon and the Congo.]
To Congo and resignation edit
Having visited the mouth of the Congo River, Grenfell and Comber felt a mission along the river would be possible. Before they returned to Cameroon, therefore, they left a letter for the king of the Kongo Kingdom, the Manikongo, stating their intention to return and seek an audience. This they did a few months later, reaching the Kingdom's capital, M'banza-Kongo – or, as the Kingdom's Portuguese sponsors had renamed it, São Salvador – in August 1878. There they were warmly received by the king. After a period of rest, they decided to push further inland into Makuta territory, but at Tungwa, a village to the northeast, they met opposition from the local Makuta chief.
Grenfell and Comber decided to return to M'banza-Kongo, where they became more aware of the Portuguese Roman Catholic presence there. Before they began looking elsewhere to found mission stations, however, Grenfell resigned from the Baptist Missionary Society. He had left Cameroon in June knowing that his Jamaican Baptist housekeeper, Rose Edgerley, was pregnant and that he was the father. While he was away, rumours grew and letters were sent from Cameroon to the Missionary Society's headquarters in Britain. Meanwhile Grenfell had recognised the inevitable and sent a letter to the Society tendering his resignation. When their letter of acceptance reached him toward the end of the year, Grenfell promptly returned to Victoria to be present for the birth of his daughter Patience and to fulfil his promise to mary Rose.
Return to Congo edit
In the meantime, Comber had begun establishing a mission in M'banza-Kongo, despite his and Grenfell's previous misgivings. He also made no less than thirteen unsuccessful attempts to forge a route between M'banza-Kongo and Stanley Pool (now Malebo Pool), where the Congo River became navigable. His resources drained, Comber realised that a depot at the mouth of the Congo River was required, from where supplies could be received and sent inland. By the end of 1879, Comber was not only recommending that the Missionary Society set up a depot, but that Grenfell should be appointed to run it. Both recommendations were agreed by the Society, apparently without dispute, in April 1880.
Thus Grenfell was offered the post of superindendent at the new depot. He accepted and by the end of 1880 had returned with his family to the Congo, in time to set up the new depot at Musuko and establish mission stations along the Congo River at Vivi, Isangila and Manyanga.
[Next stage would be establishing stations beyond Stanely Pool, toward Stanley Falls (Kisangani).]
The Peace edit
Two months after Grenfell's reinstatement, Robert Arthington, the evangelical philanthropist who had funded Grenfell and Comber's Congo River reconnoitre in 1878, offered to fund the purchase and upkeep of a steamboat to support the expansion of the Missionary Society's work along the river. The Society accepted Arthington's offer and the following year Grenfell was recalled to monitor the work on the new boat by the Chiswick-based shipbuilders Thorneycrofts. It was designed to draw only eighteen inches when carrying six tons of cargo and to be dismantled and rebuilt either side of the cataracts it would encounter along the Congo River. It would be named Peace.
Construction and testing of the Peace was completed in [1883?], after which it was dismantled, packed into eight-hundred crates (each weighing around sixty-five pounds) and shipped with Grenfell to the mouth of the Congo River. Once there, hundreds of men were need to carry the crates and supplies beyond the Kwilu River rapids to Stanley Pool. A young engineer, whose task it would be to reassemble the Peace and then maintain it, had accompanied Grenfell on the voyage back to the Congo, but within days of arriving he fell sick and died. The same fate befell two other engineers sent to replace him. Making his headquarters near Leopoldsville (now Kinshasa), Grenfell took on the task of rebuilding the Peace himself.
[Dates when: Grenfell arrived back with Peace in crates? Reached Stanley Pool?]
In the meantime, from January to March 1884, Grenfell had already undertaken his first trip from Stanley Pool further inland along the Congo River in the Peace's whaleboat. Reaching as far north as the Equator, Grenfell passed the mouth of the Kwa River, the confluence of the Ubangi River with the Congo River and visited the riverside settlements of Bolobo, Lukolela and Irebu.
The Peace was finally launched at Stanley Pool on June 13, 1884. During the next three years Grenfell took her on six expeditions along the Congo River and its tributaries, the first expedition alone covering over a thousand miles.
The voyages of the Peace edit | ||
| No. | Commenced | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | July 1884 | Kwango and Kasai/Kwa tributaries of the Congo River; return visit to Lukolela, identifying it as a future mission site. A mission, however, the first along the Congo River's upper reaches, was not established there until November 1886. |
| 2 | October 1884 | Ruki ("Black"), Ikelemba, Itimbiri (or Rubi) and Ubangi rivers, penetrating "by far the most northerly point yet reached in the exploration of the Congo basin"[1] along the latter. Met the slave-trader Tippu Tib at Stanley Falls (now Boyoma Falls). |
| 3 | August 1885 | Lulongo, Maringa, Busira (or Juapa) rivers; contact made with Batwa. Accompanied by German explorer Kurt von François. |
| 4 | February 1886 | Kasai, Sankuru, Luebo and Lulua rivers; contact made with the Bakuba and Bakete. Accompanied by German explorer Herman von Wissman and a Baron von Nimptsch of the Congo Free State. |
| 5 | 1886 | Kwa and Mfini rivers to Lake Leopold II (now Lake Mai-Ndombe). |
| 6 | December 1886 | Kwango River as far as the Kingunji rapids. |
[The Royal Geographical Society published the observations and reports he made during these voyages, which, coupled with those he had made while exploring Cameroon, earned Grenfell the Society's 1887 Founder's Medal.]
http://www.dacb.org/stories/cameroon/legacy_grenfell.html
M'banza-Kongo was known to the Portuguese (and probably, therefore, to Grenfell and Comber) as São Salvador
Relations with the Congo Free State
At the Berlin West Africa Conference in 1884-85, the European powers had recognized the sovereign rights over the Congo of King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold's "Congo Free State," though a cloak for his personal economic ambitions, was initially heralded by European governments as a convenient means of keeping the Congo open for free trade.
Grenfell, along with William Holman Bentley, the leading BMS missionary on the lower river, and A. H. Baynes in London, shared this generally optimistic evaluation of Leopold and his Free State, and they stubbornly held to this view until long after most informed observers had revised their estimate of Leopold's alleged benevolence.
Until 1885 the great virtue of the Free State in the eyes of the Baptist missionaries was its function as a bulwark against Portuguese designs on the Congo, which carried with them the threat of Roman Catholic missionary expansion. After 1885 the forces of the Congo Free State also offered the main hope of breaking the stranglehold of Arab slave-traders on the upper river, which stood in the way of Baptist advance.
Moreover, Grenfell was warmly received by Leopold in Belgium while on furlough in July 1887, and again on three occasions in 1891, when the king conferred on him the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Leopold, "in recognition of services rendered in opening up the territory of the Congo State, and of efforts made towards ameliorating the condition of the peoples subject to his Majesty's rule."[9]
During his furlough, [Grenfell] was received King Leopold II at Brussels in July 1887. Hearing (9 Aug.) of the death of Comber he returned at once to the Congo and was busily occupied on the Peace in supplying the needs of the mission stations. But in September 1890 the Congo free State, in spite of protest, impounded the vessel for operations against the Arabs. Grenfell came home and after long negotiations the Peace was restored, an indemnity being declined. A second steamer, the Goodwill also made by Messrs. Thornycroft, was launched on the Upper Congo, December 1893.
On 13 Aug. 1891, Grenfell, who had received the Belgian Order of Leopold (chevalier), was invited to be Belgian plenipotentiary for the settlement with Portugal of the frontier of the Lunda, and was allowed by the Baptist Missionary Society to accept the offer. On 17 Nov. 1892 Grenfell and his wife reached Mwene Puto Kasongo, the headquarters on the Kwango of the brutal Kiamvo, with whom they had a peaceful interview. Below the Tungila he met Senor Sacramento, the Portuguese plenipotentiary, and after inspecting the rivers of the Lunda district the part reached St. Paul do Luanda (partly by railway) on 16 June 1893, the delimitation being agreed upon during July. He was made Commander of the Belgian Order of the Lion and received the Order of Christ from the king of Portugal.
From 1893 to 1900 Grenfell remained chiefly at Bolobo on the Congo, where a strong mission station was established. After a visit to England in 1900, he started for a systematic exploration of the Aruwimi river and by November 1902 had reached Mawambi, about eighty miles from the western extreme of the Uganda protectorate. Between 1903 and 1906 he was busy with a new station at Yalemba, fifteen miles east of the confluence of the Aruwimi with the Congo.
Meanwhile he found difficulty in obtaining building sites from the Congo Free State, which accorded them freely to Roman catholics. He grew convinced of the evil character of Belgian administration, in which he had previously trusted. In 1903 King Leopold despatched at Grenfell's entreaty a commission of inquiry, before which he gave evidence, but its report gave him little satisfaction.
Grenfell died after a bad attack of blackwater fever at Basoko on 1 July 1906. His salary never exceeded £180 a year. Grenfell was twice married: (1) On 11 Feb. 1876, at Heneage Street baptist chapel, Birmingham, to Mary Hawkes, who died after a premature confinement, at Akwatown on the Cameroon river on 10 Jan. 1877; (2) in 1878, at Victoria, Cameroons, to Rose Patience Edgerley, a West Indian. His eldest daughter, Patience, who, after being educated in England and at Brussels returned to the Congo as a teacher, died of haematuric fever at Bolobo on 18 March 1899.
A memorial tablet was unveiled in Heneage Street baptist chapel, Birmingham, on 24 September 1907.
Grenfell was an observant explorer (cf. BENTLEY, Pioneering on the Congo, ii 127-128) and an efficient student of native languages. He promoted industrial training, and gave every proof of missionary zeal.
[The Times, 1 Aug. 1906; Sir Harry Johnston, George Grenfell and the Congo, 1908, 2 vols. ; George Hawker, Life of George Grenfell, 1909 (portraits); W. Holman Bentley, Life on the Congo (introduction by G. Grenfell), 1887; Shirley J. Dickins, Grenfell of the Congo, 1910; Lord Mountmorres, The Congo Independent State, 1906, pp. 110 fl.]
By the mid-1890s evidence was accumulating of widespread atrocities perpetrated by Belgian agents in the conduct of the rubber trade. Leopold responded in September 1896 by appointing the Commission for the Protection of the Natives, comprising six missionaries, one of whom was Grenfell. But the commission's powers were limited, and none of its members came from the Equator district, where the atrocities were concentrated. Grenfell himself, now admitting the existence of abuses, but still persuaded of Leopold's personal good intentions, regarded the commission as "an unworkable machine" that would prove powerless to effect change where it was needed.[10]
In 1902 the journalist E. D. Morel began his campaign for Congo reform and succeeded in mobilizing the full weight of the British Nonconformist conscience in opposition to Leopold's regime. The BMS committee, however, relying heavily on Grenfell's opinion, still maintained its public profession of confidence in Leopold's rule.
In August 1903 Grenfell drafted a letter to Leopold II, explaining that his conscience no longer permitted him to wear the decorations that the king had bestowed on him for his services to the state.[11] His action was not, however, a protest against atrocities perpetrated by the agents of the Free State. At this point he still believed that the crimes that had been committed were the action of individual officials, and in his experience, these had been suitably punished by the authorities. Rather, Grenfell's protest was prompted by the continuing refusal of the state to permit the BMS to realize its plans for advance on the upper river and so complete the chain of Protestant stations across central Africa. Grenfell sent his letter, with the decorations, to Baynes in London, leaving it to his judgment whether they should be forwarded to Leopold. Baynes deemed it wise to take no action.
Despite the BMS committee's assertion that its missionaries were not in a position to provide firsthand testimony of abuses, some were soon doing precisely that, supplying Morel with accounts of the drastic impact of excessive taxation in the Equator district. A fact-finding tour in 1903 by the British consul at Boma, Roger Casement, supplied irrefutable evidence of the true extent of atrocities. This was the conclusive blow for Grenfell, causing him to resign from the Commission for the Protection of the Natives. By April 1904 he was a sadly disillusioned man, admitting that he had been duped:
I really believed the King's first purpose was to establish law and order and to promote the well being of the people, and that the development of the resources of the country was a means to that end. I regretfully, most regretfully, admit that those who have so long maintained the contrary are to all intents and purposes justified, and that I have been blinded by my wish to believe "the best." The recent revelations have saddened me more than I can say![12]
Baynes himself and the BMS as a whole, soon reached the same conclusion. Leopold had bowed to the mounting agitation by appointing a Commission of Enquiry into the alleged atrocities. The publication of its report in November 1905 led to the demise of the Free State. The Congo became a Belgian colony in 1908.
In retrospect, Grenfell's confidence in the essential benevolence of the Free State appears naive, and in the final years of his life he castigated himself for his naivete. Yet it would be wholly mistaken to portray Grenfell as half-hearted in his defense of African interests. He retained from his Cameroons experience an unshakable confidence in the capacity and potential of black people at a time when racism was beginning to affect even missionary attitudes. He consistently argued for giving black missionaries greater responsibility, and he attempted to persuade the BMS that John Pinnock, son of Francis Pinnock, should be paid on the same basis as, and granted equal status to, his white missionary colleagues.[13]
Mission Strategist for Central Africa
Grenfell's abiding significance is as a far-sighted mission strategist for central Africa. He was deeply influenced by Robert Arthington's vision of a chain of mission stations stretching across the continent to meet the westward advance of the Church Missionary Society from Uganda. Grenfell corresponded directly with Arthington, and the two men met in 1891, when Grenfell promised Arthington that he would explore the Aruwimi River as a possible route toward southeastern Sudan and the Upper Nile; he redeemed the promise in 1894.[14] Grenfell's vision for the evangelization of the whole Sudanic belt was shared with the young evangelical Anglican Graham Wilmot Brooke, who later played a controversial role in the CMS Niger mission. Brooke spent a month with Grenfell at Stanley Pool in 1888 and greatly impressed the older man with his skills as a cartographer and his spiritual zeal, along with his Livingstonian strategic perception of "the geographical feat as the beginning of the missionary enterprise."[15]
Grenfell's determination in his later years to press still further up the Upper Congo, and in particular to explore its largest tributaries – the Ubangi, Aruwimi, and Lindi Rivers – was far more than an eccentric fixation. It stemmed from a conviction that "we have before us in the Sudan the widest and wildest empire of the Crescent against which the Cross is being lifted up."[16]
Grenfell rightly perceived that the sub-Saharan belt would become in the twentieth century the principal zone of conflict between Islam and evangelical Christianity. That was why he was increasingly exasperated in his last years by the repeated refusal of the Free State authorities to allow the BMS to found a station on the Aruwimi. For the same reason, he believed it to be essential to develop the BMS station at Yakusu (downstream from Kisangani) as a center of training for teachers and evangelists for the Upper Congo--a vision that was realized after his death.
In the final months of his life, Grenfell continued to ponder which was the more feasible route of further advance from Yakusu; whether eastward toward Uganda, as Arthington had urged, or southward along the river toward LMS territory.[17]
He died at Basoko, near the junction of the Aruwimi and the Congo, on July 1, 1906.
(Mount Cameroon)
In the north-west the Upper Guinea mountains send their eastern spurs across the boundary, and from a volcanic rift, which runs south-west to north-east, the Cameroon peak towers up, its summit 13,370 ft. high.
This mountain, whose south-western base is washed by the Atlantic, is the highest point on the western side of Africa, and it alone of the great mountains of the continent lies close to the coast. From any vantage point, but especially from the sea, it presents a magnificent spectacle, while some 30 M. westward rises Clarence peak, the culminating point of Fernando Po. With an area, on an isolated base, of 700 to Boo sq. m., Cameroon mountain has but two distinct peaks, Great Cameroon and Little Cameroon (5820 ft.), which is from foot to top covered with dense forest. The native designation of the highest peak is Mongo-ma-Loba, or the Mountain of Thunder, and the whole upper region is usually called Mongo-mo-Ndemi, or the Mountain of Greatness. On the principal summit there are a group of craters.
Congo river: http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761553048_1/Congo_(river).html
http://www.wholesomewords.org/biography/biorpgrenfell.html
George Grenfell (1849-1906) was an English Baptist missionary and explorer to Africa. Labored for thirty-two years in Africa; the first three years in the Cameroons and the remaining years in the Congo.
In 1878, Grenfell married Rose Patience Edgerley, an African bride, who accompanied him in many of his most adventurous journeys. Their children included a son who died at 2 months old; daughter's Patience (Pattie), Carrie, Gertrude (Gertie), Peggie, and Grace; and other children who died in infancy. Mrs. Grenfell died July 27, 1927.
http://www.wholesomewords.org/biography/biorpgrenfell.html
Six hundred miles south of the Cameroons, the Congo, second largest of the world's rivers, enters the Atlantic. A hundred miles from the sea, navigation was barred by a series of cataracts, beyond which the map was blank.
Livingstone and Stanley's earlier exploration of the Congo River: Livingstone, to be sure, had reached the Lualaba in 1871 at Nyangwe ... at first he thought he had found the long-sought source of the Nile, but later suspected it might turn out to be the Congo. He urged the powerful Mohammedan, Tiptu Tib, to help him secure supplies and carriers for the purpose of ascending the river. The appeal fell on unresponsive ears, and Livingstone had to content himself with exploring the upper reaches of the Lualaba and its eastern branch, the Luapula River. So it was until August 8, 1877, when Henry M. Stanley and his sadly depleted, half-starved caravan reached Boma, near the mouth of the Congo, after their heroic odyssey of 999 days in crossing Africa.
But some months before Stanley's sensational achievement ... two men were independently planning to plant a chain of mission stations far in the interior or even across the continent. One of these was Grenfell, then laboring in the Cameroons. The other was Robert Arthington, who in England had dedicated his fortune to Christ and himself to poverty in order to supply money to various missionary societies.
On May 14, 1877, Arthington offered the Baptist Society 1,000 pounds for the purpose of [evangelism] in the Congo region. With astounding vision he wrote: "I hope we shall soon have a steamer on the Congo, to carry the gospel eastward, and south and north of the river, as the way may open, as far as Nyangwe." The Society did not act, however, until the publication of Stanley's letter in the Daily Telegraph, September 17, 1877.
Early in 1878 Grenfell was on his way along the bank of the Congo ... [he] encountered almost insuperable difficulties. But finally, after thirteen attempts, after splashing through many swamps and tramping through grass often fifteen feet high, after frequent perilous escapes from savages and after one of his companions had been severely wounded, he passed the cataracts and reached Stanley Pool, in February, 1881.
By means of the vast system of waterways created by the Congo and its numerous tributaries, some twenty or twenty-five million people could be reached. [Safer, larger and more reliable transport than canoes was needed] ... The solution of the problem was a steamer, as had been suggested several years earlier by Robert Arthington, who now provided one thousand pounds toward its construction and three thousand pounds toward its perpetual maintenance.
See http://www.wholesomewords.org/biography/biorpgrenfell.html for the tribal practices with which Grenfell had to contend.
At Stanley Falls he saw the notorious Tippu Tib, who conducted wholesale slave raids throughout vast areas of Central and Eastern Africa.
Grenfell was sadly disillusioned by the administration of the Congo Free State by the Belgians. Knowing the chaos and savagery of native rule, he expected a great improvement from the rule of the Belgians and assisted them in many ways, notably by serving in 1891 as a capitol Commissioner to settle the southern boundary of the State. Even prior to this, however, he had begun to have serious misgivings, as he saw the Belgian octopus fastening itself on the Congo and as King Leopold enunciated the monstrous, doctrine that this vast region and its inhabitants were his personal property.
Before long, however, with spirits crushed by forced labor, floggings, imprisonments, mutilations and murders, they cried out in bitter despair, "Rubber is death!" When, therefore, in 1890 the Belgian authorities commandeered the Peace to further their own schemes, Grenfell made such an effective protest in England that the steamer was restored and the Belgian King bestowed on him at a personal interview in Brussels the insignia of "Chevalier of the Order of Leopold."
...while King Leopold was hypocritically professing to bestow thousands in philanthropic efforts for the uplift of Central Africa, he was in reality sending his myrmidons over the Congo with orders to make the people produce more rubber and was filling his personal coffers with millions saturated with African blood.
The Belgians also hindered [Grenfell] in his efforts to establish mission stations all the way across Central Africa. By patient persistence, however, he succeeded in establishing stations farther and farther along the course of the Congo, even as far as Yakusu and Yalemba.
Grenfell was indignant at the preferential treatment accorded the Catholics and that the Catholics, instead of seeking the untouched masses of heathenism, made a special point to establish a rival mission wherever he established a station and sought by various devices to subvert his converts.
Added to the other sorrows were the sorrows of death. Africa was already known as the White Man's Grave. The toll of missionary life was greatest in the Congo, which was called "the shortcut to heaven." In 1883-84 seven of Grenfell's colleagues finished their course after only a few months of service. In 1885 four men died in three months, and in 1887 six missionaries fell in five months. In other years also there were distressing losses. Some people at the home base felt that the loss in life was too enormous and that the Congo Mission should be abandoned or at least curtailed. But Grenfell was of a different spirit.
The sorrows of death came even closer and almost crushed him. He had buried his first wife in the Cameroons, and it was his sad lot to bury four of his children on the Congo.
Concerning one place he states [in 1902], "Just twenty years have elapsed since I first landed at the foot of this cliff and was driven off at the point of native spears. The reception this time was very different. The teacher and a little crowd of school children stood on the beach to welcome us."
He established a printing press, taught brick making, treated the sick, engaged in translation, and rendered such distinguished service in exploration and cartography that the Royal Geographical Society awarded him a Gold Medal in 1886. He was the first person to steam up the Congo and to explore many of its tributaries.
Soon after opening up a new station at Yalemba, near Stanley Falls, he fell ill of haematuric fever. His native boys, who affectionately called him Tata or Father, gently took him on board the Peace and steamed down to Bapoto. He rapidly grew weaker and his soul departed July 1, 1906.
Rivers explored by Grenfell edit
Cameroon edit
Wouri · Sanaga
Congo edit
Congo River (Kwilu · Zadi)
Busira (Juapa River) · Kasai/Kwa · Kwango · Luebo · Lulongo · Lulua · Maringa · Mfini · Ruki (Black River) · Sankuru · Ikelemba · Itimbiri (Rubi River) · Ubangi ·
Bibliography
Works by George Grenfell
Although Grenfell never wrote a book, his geographic researches were published by the Royal Geographical Society, notably in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society 4 (1882): 585-95, 648, and Geographical Journal 20 (1902): 485-98, 572. His diaries, correspondence, and letter books are preserved in the Baptist Missionary Society archives, housed in the Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford, England.
Works About George Grenfell
Hawker, George. The Life of George Grenfell: Congo Missionary and Explorer. London: Religious Tract Society, 1909. Johnston, H. H. George Grenfell and the Congo. 2 vols. London: Hutchinson, 1908. Lagergren, D. Mission and State in the Congo: A Study of the Relations Between Protestant Missions and the Congo Independent State Authorities, with Special Reference to the Equator District, 1885-1903. Uppsala: Swedish Institute of Missionary Research, 1970. Slade, Ruth M. English-Speaking Missions in the Congo Independent State (1878-1908). Brussels: Académie Royale des Sciences Coloniales, 1959. Stanley, Brian. The History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1792-1992. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1992.
This article, is reproduced from the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Jul. 97, Vol. 21 Issue 3, p. 120-124, copyright© 1997, edited by G. H. Anderson, J. Bonk, and R. T. Coote. All rights reserved.
GRENFELL, George The Cameroon District, West Africa London Royal Geographical Society 1882
http://www.wholesomewords.org/biography/biorpgrenfell.html
Anecdote
Huge crocodiles dozing on the muddy banks of the mighty Congo sullenly opened their beady eyes to gaze at the strange monster, then hastily plunged into the river. The cause of their alarm was a small steamer, named the Peace, the first ship ever to breast the Congo waters under steam power. The crocodiles were not alone in being alarmed at the sight and sound of the throbbing steamer. Frequently the Africans were so startled they fled pell-mell into the jungles or were so aroused they swarmed out in their canoes to do battle.
Coming in sight of a large village, the white captain shouted orders to his black crew. The boat slowed up and drew within fifty yards of the shore. The captain's keen eyes observed that the people were friendly, so he climbed down into the ship's canoe and was paddled ashore by several of his men. Scores of natives crowded around to look at the strange man with the white face, who proceeded to tell them that he was a missionary and had come to bring the light and love of God.
"Do you mean to suggest that we are living in darkness?" asked the chief somewhat petulantly.
Just then the missionary heard the sound of sobbing. Making his way through the crowd he found two little girls bound with cords and tied to a tree. "What does this mean?" he asked.
With no evidence of shame, the chief told how he and his warriors armed with spears and bows and arrows, had gone far up the river in their canoes on a raiding expedition against another tribe. "And these girls," continued the chief, "are part of the booty we captured. They are my slaves and are tied here until somebody buys them."
His heart touched by the sight of the trembling, sobbing girls, the white man promptly handed over some beads and cloth, took the girls down to the river and told them to get into the canoe. As they were paddled out to the S.S. Peace, they kept wondering if the white man would be cruel to them.
Soon the ship started upstream again and the astonishment of the girls knew no bounds as they sped swiftly past forests and villages on the banks. On and on they went for several hours. Eventually, the Peace turned a bend in the river and the missionary saw a whole fleet of canoes filled with fierce-looking warriors, some holding spears, others with bows in their hands and poisoned arrows drawn to the head.
These Congo men were enraged because, just a few days earlier, people from down the river had suddenly raided their town, burned many of their huts, killed many of the villagers and taken away some of their children. Since the Peace had also come from down-river, those on board must likewise be enemies, they conjectured.
At a signal from the chief, the fierce battle-cry of the tribe was sounded and a shower of spears and arrows struck the steamer. One of them almost pierced the missionary captain. Suddenly one of the little slave girls began to shout and wave her hand. "What is it?" asked the missionary.
"See!" she answered excitedly, pointing to a warrior who was standing up in a canoe and preparing to hurl another spear. "That is my brother and this is my town!"
"Call to him and attract his attention!" said the captain. The little girl shouted as loudly as she could, but the African warriors were making a fearful din, and the only answer was a hail of spears and arrows. Hastily, the captain issued an order to the steamer's African engineer, and in a moment a wild, piercing shriek rent the air, then several others in quick succession. The warriors ceased their yelling and stood as if turned to stone. They had never before heard the whistle of a steamer!
"Shout again-quickly!" said the captain to the little Congo girl.
Instantly the shrill childish voice rang out across the water, calling first her brother's name and then her own. The astonished warrior dropped his spear, seized his oar and quickly paddled to the steamer. In response to instructions from the captain, the girl told how the white man in "the big canoe that smokes" had found her and the other girl in the town of their enemies, had saved them from slavery, had brought them safely home, and now was going to set them free.
The story passed quickly from one canoe to another, as the two girls were taken ashore; and as the captain walked up the village street all the warriors who, only a few minutes before, had tried to kill him, were now gazing wonderingly at the white friend who had brought back the daughters they thought they had lost forever. Now they were ready to listen to his story of the great Father God who sent His Son to be the Light of this dark and sinful world.
This remarkable ship captain was George Grenfell, pioneer missionary in the vast Congo region of Africa.
- ^ Johnston 1908, p.116.