Draft:William Hughes

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William Hughes (1856-1924) was born on 8 April 1856 at a remote seventeenth-century long house farm, Tu Hwnt I’r Afon, at Rhoslan, near Criccieth. Inspired by the Scottish Dr David Livingstone (1813-1873) devoted to Africa which inspired the Livingstone Inland Mission (LIM) whose missionaries established protestants missions in African hinterland, Hughes was trained as a minister at Llangollen Baptist College and, in 1882, the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) accepted him for serving in the now Democratic Republic Congo.

Africa

He left Wales in August 1882 and arrived in Congo in September 1882 and served in the station (mission/parish) of Vunda, named after Bayneston, near Palabala (found by the LIM in 1878) in the current Congo Central province. Struck down by fever and cared for by Sir Francis de Winston, Henry Morton Stanley’s doctor, as he fell very sick and could not accommodate himself with the tropical climate, both Stanley (a Welsh greatest explorer of Africa who found Dr David Livingstone and who famously immortalised this meeting by his sentence "Dr Livingstone, I presume?", he said he uttered when he found himself face to face with the old man on November 10, 1871 at the now Tanzania old city of Udjidji), and his doctor Winston (who became the first administrator and who proclaimed in Vivi, the first Congo capital city, on 1st July 1885, the Belgian king Leopold II Congo Free State that he had maliciously offered and accepted by all the participants at the Berlin conference 1884-1885), adviced him to return back in Wales, especially as other missionnaries lost their lives because of the tropical sicknesses.

Back in Wales with his two Congo Boys : Kinkasa and Nkanza

Pastor Hughes came back and disembarked in Liverpool in September 1885 and settle at Colwyn Bay with the two black Congolese boys : Kinkasa, aged 11, and Nkanza, aged 8. As he was almost dying when back, William Hughes had another idea: after experiencing those difficulties for any foreigners, and especially European, to accommodate with the African environment, culture, language and tropical diseases, he believed that it could be better for Africans and Congolese to be brought to Europe and the West. They then needed to be trained in teaching the Gospels and also in modern jobs and activities, so that, when back in Africa, they would become the change makers for their own people and community and countries. He believed that Wales was the best place, as the warm environment would not make the students missing their back home Africa.

His book and the Congo House

In 1892, he published a book “Dark Africa and the Way Out” to tell the story of his vision. And, the Pastor needed to struggle with his Baptist Missionary Society hierarchy as they refused to accept his resignation. It was not until 1886 when William and his fiancée, Katie Jones, were given a medical examination and pronounced unfit to serve in Africa. In June 1887, he was appointed pastor of Llanelian Baptist church. The family took up residence in Bay View Road and started calling their home the Congo House. In April 1890, he took over a house in Nant-y-Glyn Road which he named the Congo Institute. He then started struggling for his scheme but, he did not receive any support and started then raised money himself with the two boys. He schooled them and they attended local schools and learned Welsh and English. They quickly learned it perfectly. And then the Pastor made some pictures of them and sold them to raise money. As they learned also singing gospels, with the pastor they started singing gospels in Welsh, in English and in their own native tongue from Cardiff to Wrexham.

The Congo Training Institute

It was on April 4 1899 that he officially launched the Congo Training Institute by holding the first Congo House Institute Committee meeting. They moved to the new building in 1890. The first Congo Boys, famously known also as the “Congo Boys of Cardiff”, were joined by a third boy and then by others from the Congo. The students attended the Tabernacle Welsh Baptist Chapel in Colwyn Bay and Calfaria Welsh Baptist Chapel in Old Colwyn.

The boys and girls were trained for five years in craft apprenticeships, such as carpentry, printing, tailoring, and blacksmithing so that they could deliver those skills learned not only as missionaries and Gospel disciples but also as change makers upon return to their own country. Pastor Hughes also felt that Africans should be able to worship in their mother tongues and needed to have full control over their own affairs and resources. They needed, of course, to be trained and trained enough. In 1891, the Institute received big financial support from Stanley when he came to lecture on June 14^th in Caernarfon in front of 4,000 people. The following month the Institute also received the patronage of King Leopold II of Belgium.

The African Training Institute

Pastor Hughes started recruiting young people from other countries like Sierra Leone, South Africa, Botswana, Grenada (West Indies), Bahamas, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Cameroon, Namibia, Ghana, Nigeria, Angola, and Liberia. The Institute changed its original name to become the “African Training Institute of Wales”.

Amongst the students were two daughters of Dutch and Congolese parents, Ernestina Francis and Lulu Coote. In 1896-1897, there had been 11 students, including one American, Paul Daniels from Charleston, South Carolina. He was still there in 1897-98, with 18 others and some of them started to study a more academic curriculum including Greek, Latin, mathematic and geography. Apart from English and Welsh, there were at least seven African languages spoken in the institute. Amongst the students were also the first Africans to be knighted by the Queen: Sir Samuel Lewis of Sierra Leone, the pioneering Nigerian churchman Mojola Agbebi, the Jamaica-born author Dr T. E. S. Scholes, and Mr I. McPherson, a black resident of Newport, who became one of the most successful collectors for the Institute. One of the famous couples who lived in the Institute was Joseph and Ernestina Morford. Ernestina arrived at the Institute in 1891, when she was eight years old and she married Joseph Morford, a black missionary from Tennessee who was also visiting the Institute. They were married in Africa and, for eight years, ran schools in Nigeria. Some of the students were given opportunities to study abroad: Kwesi Quainoo and Ashmael Pratt studied medicine at Edinburg University; Ayobi Oyejola graduated in medicine in 1906; Akinsanya Oluwale qualified as a medical officer at Liverpool; one Nigerian became a carpenter and another the director of education in Abeokuta.

After some years, the Institute sent some students back. Daniel, trained as a carpenter, was the first student to be returned to Africa in July 1890. Unfortunately, estimated at 12 years old, Kinkasa died in May 1892, Samba, probably 14, died in March 1892, Nkanza died in April 1892, at an estimated age of 16; Joseph Emmanuel Abraham, AKA Kobina Boodo, died in 1909, aged 21, and Ernestina Morford, aged 30, in January 1914. They were buried in Old Colwyn cemetery, while the Institute came through difficult financial situations at that time.

Difficulties

An article in a newspaper caused big damage to the Institute and to the pastor. On June 10^th 1911 the African Institute’s last annual report was published. As Christmas 1911 approached, the newspaper talked about the scandal of a local unmarried black boy who fathered a “Brown Baby” with a white girl. The Pastor challenged the article and, in spite of the two articles in the newspaper and the truth that the father of the child was not a member of the Institute but an actor named John Lionel Franklin, the damaged had already been caused as most of Pastor Hughes‘s friends and supporters of the Institute lost confidence in him.

Close down

The Institute closed on 21st March 1912. A week before, on 14th March, Hughes was declared bankrupt, having amassed a debt of £4,932.  He told the court: “The attacks in John Bull killed the Institute, and the Institute killed me.” Then, Pastor Hughes made the worst mistake of his life by initiating proceedings for libel against Horatio Bottomley, the owner of the John Bull newspaper. He lost the case of the tribunal. The trial destroyed him and his last days were full of ignominies and degradations. In 1917 and 1918, he considered moving to Cameroon and appealing for support from the people of Colwyn Bay. Unfortunately, in 1918, his daughter Claudia died; he remained with only one boy, Stanley, born at the Congo Institute in August 1890 and named after Hughes’ great hero H.M. Stanley. Pastor Hughes then took to drink as a means of escape. He was admitted to Penrhyndeudraeth Workhouse and was later transferred to the poorhouse, 12 Waen Terrace, at Conwy, where he died of heart disease on 28 January 1924.

Legacy

It was in Colwyn Bay African Training Institute of Wales that was first boosted the idea of the Pan-Africanism: African people sitting together and dealing about African issues and solutions. Pastor Hughes‘ ideas on Pan-Africanism influenced the first African politicians who would play an important role during the independence years such as Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana) and Hastings Banda (Malawi). Around 100 students trained there and had varied impact in Africa as educators, doctors, missionaries, printers, carpenters and pastors. The Archives of the Institute are now at Bangor University and the building used for the institute and the church used by students can be visited in Colwyn Bay. William Hughes’ dream was really damaged and destroyed not just by the mismanagement, misfortune and lack of support but also by the racism of the newspaper owner and some inhabitants of Colwyn Bay. Hughes’ contribution to develop and empower Black Africans continued for decades, as his students worked back in Africa with their own people. Part of his legacy was the independent Baptist church of the once-German Cameroon, led by Africans themselves who were trained and educated in Colwyn Bay’s Institute. He could be recognised as a man of great achievement. After the foundation of the Liberian republic in 1847, Pastor Hughes and his Congo and African Institute could be seen as the leaders of the Pan-African Nationalism by the personalities who came to the Institute as inquisitive visitors or resident students including Mojola Agbebi, Edward Blyden and President Joseph J. Cheeseman. Reverend Hughes was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; in 1908 he was the Honorary Secretary of the Welsh National Eisteddfod. In his last letter to his friends, those who specially supported his incredible idea of the Congo and African Institute, Pastor William Hughes wrote: “Do not forget to remember me”.

References

Burroughts, R. (2022) Imperial Entanglements of the Congo/African Institute, Colwyn Bay, Wales (1889-1911), 2022.

Draper, C. and Lawson-Reay, J., Scandal at Congo House: William Hughes and the African Institute, Colwyn Bay, Liverpool University Press, 2012.

https://jeffreygreen.co.uk/colwyn-bays-african-institute-1889-1912/

https://openjournals.ugent.be/af/article/id/60990/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-41777209