Alexander Worthy Clerk

The Reverend Alexander Worthy Clerk
Portrait of Alexander Worthy Clerk
Born	1820 Fairfield Plantage, Manchester Parish, Jamaica
Died	1906 (aged 86) Aburi, Gold Coast
Nationality	British subject Jamaican
Education	Fairfield Teachers' Seminary, Fairfield, Manchester Parish, Jamaica
Occupation	Clergyman Teacher Missionary
Spouse(s)	Pauline Hesse (m. 1848)
Children	Nicholas Timothy Clerk (son)
Relatives	Clerk family
Church	Moravian Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands Basel Evangelical Missionary Society
Ordained	Fairfield Moravian Church, 1842

Alexander Worthy Clerk (1820^[1][2][3][4] – 1906^[5][6][7]) was a Jamaican Moravian missionary, teacher and clergyman who arrived in 1843 in the Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg (now Osu) in Accra, Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast.^[8] He was part of the first group of 24 West Indian missionaries who worked under the auspices of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society of Switzerland.^[9][10] He is widely acknowledged and regarded as one of the pioneers of the precursor to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. A leader in education in colonial Ghana, he established a boarding middle school, The Salem School at Osu in 1843.^[11] He was the father of Nicholas Timothy Clerk (1862 -1961), a Basel-trained theologian, who was elected the first Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast^[8] and co-founded the all boys’ boarding high school, Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School established in 1938.^[12]

Early life and education

Clerk was born in 1820 on Fairfield Plantage near Spur Tree, Manchester Parish, Jamaica under British colonial rule.^[2][13][1] Little is known of Clerk's parentage and childhood other than his parents were Christian Jamaicans.^[2][5] He studied Christian theology and ministry, ethics, pedagogy and education at the now defunct Fairfield Teachers’ Seminary (Lehrerseminar Fairfield), a teacher’s training college and theological seminary, founded by the Reverend Jacob Zorn, a German superintendent of the Moravian Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands and a missionary of the London-based Missions of the Church of the United Brethren and its sister organization, The Brethren’s Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel.^{[9][14][15][16][17][18]} The training institute was established by Zorn to prepare young Jamaican men for Christian evangelism, catechism and the propagation of the gospel in the West Indies after the abolishment of slavery in the British Empire in 1834^[9][14] Clerk’s education was funded by two wealthy Victorian Christian women from London, Miss Ibbett and Mrs. P. Skeate.^[16][17][18] Clerk was set to become a missionary affiliated to the Fairfield Moravian Church mission presbytery, (founded on 1 January 1826) after his graduation from the seminary in 1842.^[9][19][20]

Missionary activities in the Gold Coast

Historical context

Early accounts indicate that the Moravian Church in Herrnhut in Saxony, Germany, recruited an inhabitant of the Gold Coast in 1735 and trained him in the arts and philosophy at the University of Copenhagen.^[10] However, on his return to the Gold Coast, the man found out that he could barely speak his mother tongue.^[10] A series of European missionaries were sent by these mission bodies.^[21] Some died within a few years, others within a few months.^[9] The Directors of the Danish Guinea Company invited Missions of the Church of the United Brethren, a missionary society of the Moravian Church to the Gold Coast, to teach in the castle and fort schools with five missionaries arriving at Christiansborg in 1768.^[21] The first two batches of eleven missionaries all died within a short period from tropical diseases, having not fully acclimatized to the local environment.^[21]

A group of Christian Protestants from the Lutheran Moravians and other sister Reformed Churches in Germany and Switzerland founded the German Missionary Society in 1815.^[22] The mission later changed its name to the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society, and finally the Basel Mission.^[22] They envisioned working with established missionary societies already operating in “heathen countries and unevangelized areas” in the world.^[22]

In 1825, the Governor of the Danish Protectorate, Christiansborg (now the Accra suburb Osu), Major Johan Christopher von Richelieu, upon the observation of the degradation of moral values of European residents living within and without the Danish fort, Christiansborg Castle, requested the Danish Crown, through a certain Mr. Ronne who represented Basel Mission interests in Denmark, to arrange for missionaries from the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society in Switzerland to evangelize in the then Gold Coast.^[10][23][24] For a decade and half, the chaplain's station at the Christiansborg Castle had remained vacant.^[23] Richelieu acted as a chaplain and reinstated public Christian worship, set up a school were 150 pupils were baptized and educated. More hands were therefore needed for evangelism.^[23][25] Four young men from rural Switzerland and southern Germany between the ages of 23 and 27 years were selected by the Basel Mission. They were: Karl F. Salbach (27 years), Gottlieb Holzwath (26 years), Johannes Henke (23 years) and the Swiss-born Johannes Gottlieb Schmidt (24 years).^[10][23] They were skilled tradesmen with practical training experience in, pottery, carpentry, shoe-making, masonry, joinery hat-making and black-smithing.^[25] In Christiansborg, Accra, they also started the Basel Mission Trading Factory to export palm oil and other local products to fund the mission work and also set up an artisan workshop to train local entrepreneurs in advanced methods of tradesmanship in order to serve their communities in the Gold Coast and West Africa, which in the view of the Basel committee, was a way of atoning for the horror and devastating effects of the slave trade brought on by European colonialism.^[25]

They arrived in Christiansborg on 18 December 1828 and had their first church service at a coastal hamlet called Amanfon, near Osu on 28 December 1828. All but Johannes Henke died within eight months of their arrival from malaria and other tropical diseases.^[10]  Henke eventually died on 22 November 1831.^[10] A second batch of three missionaries made up of the Rev. Andreas Riis, Rev. Peter Peterson Jager and Dr. Christian Frederich Heinze, a physician arrived to continue the work. Five weeks after their arrival, the medical doctor who was supposed to take care of the health needs of the other two missionaries died of malaria on 26 April 1832. the Rev. P.P. Jager also died on 18 July 1832.^[10]

Rev. Andreas Riis, a Danish minister was the only surviving missionary. After becoming ill from malaria, a native herbalist who was introduced to him by his European trader friend, George Lutterodt treated him. After his recovery, Lutterodt advised Riis to move to the hilly countryside in Akropong – Akuapem where the climate is much cooler and had a more conducive environment.^[10]

In January 1835, Riis and his friend were warmly received by the then Omanhene of Akuapem, Nana Addo Dankwa I. They finally moved and settled at Akropong on the 26 March 1835. Osiadan (meaning "builder in the Akan language) as Riis was affectionately called, because he had built his house made of stones and timber.^[9] He ate local foods and spoke Akuapem Twi just like the people of Akropong. Riis lived like the locals at the time, spending weeks in the forest, slept on palm branches and fed on peppersoup, snails and wormfish by some accounts.^[9]

After settling for a year and with the approval of the Home Committee of the Basel Mission, Riis arranged to get a wife called Miss Anna Wolters, a twenty year old Danish lady. Among those who came with her were Andreas Stranger and Johannes Murdter.^[10] Stranger died on Christmas Eve in 1837 and Murdter, Riis’ own wife and infant died at the close of 1838. Riis had become the symbol of hope for the evangelical revival in the missionary work.^[10]

Riis’ poor health condition, the rough terrain and the high death rates of European missionaries coupled with the failure of the missionary work compelled the Basel Missionary Society to abandon the work and recall Riis.^[9] For eight years Riis had been unable to convert a native to Christianity and could not boast of a single baptism.^[9] In 1840, Andreas Riis, travelled through Akwamu, Shai, Kroboland, Akim Abuakwa, and Cape Coast and arrived in Kumasi in 1840.^[10] Seeing that conditions were too bad to contain, the Basel Mission authorities were displeased, Riis was recalled to Switzerland and the mission was to be closed.^[9] At the farewell durbar organized in honor of Riis, the paramount chief, Omanhene of Akuapem, is known to have remarked, “When God created the world, He made the Book (Bible) for the European and animism (fetish) for the African, but if you could show us some Africans who could read the Bible, then we would surely follow you”.^[9][10]

Arrival of West Indian missionaries

Alexander Worthy Clerk, Aburi, Gold Coast, c. 1861

This chief’s coded message gave Riis and the Basel Missionary Society food for thought. The dawn of the new day for African missions appeared when contacts were made to involve Afro-Caribbean Christians from the West Indies in the mission to Africa. Already, such a suggestion had come to Basel from England, but the impetus for Basel's involvement must have come from Riis.^[9]

Riis arrived at the European headquarters of the Basel Mission on 7 July 1840 and immediately conferred with the directors of the mission who had already decided to end the mission’s operations in West Africa.^[22] Riis then made a compelling case by narrating the Akropong’s chief farewell address to the mission’s board committee.^[22] The directors agreed to go to the Caribbean islands with the aim of finding the descendants of freed slaves who were perhaps better suited or adapted to acclimatize to the West African tropical environment.^[22]

Sometime in 1842, the Home Committee selected the Rev. Johan Georg Widmann, Hermann Halleut  and the German-trained Americo-Liberian missionary, George Thompson to go to Jamaica to recruit Christians of African descent.^[22] Andreas Riis and his wife, Anna Wolters, Widmann and Thompson left Basel for the British leeward island of Antigua in the West Indies via Liverpool to engage and recruit black Christian men who would accompany them to West Africa while Halleut went directly to the Gold Coast to prepare the grounds for their arrival.^[22] With the assistance of James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, the Governor of Jamaica at the time, the Rev. Jacob Zorn, the Superintendent of the Moravian Mission in Jamaica, the Rev. J. F. Sessing and the Rev. J. Miller, an agent of the Africa Civilization Society, Riis was able to recruit candidates after a mass appeal across the island and an extensive and rigorous interview process.^[22] Many of the volunteers who initially applied to the programme were found to be unsuitable: a few were lapsed Christians, one was excited about the adventure and wished to mine for gold, another had an invalid wife who was too ill to travel while other potential recruits wished merely to return to the motherland, Africa, the mission work not being a top priority in their minds. It was quite an arduous task finding the right candidates to the extent that Riis and other Basel missionaries almost gave up on the initiative. ^[9][10][22]

Riis met Clerk’s teacher, the Moravian, Jacob Zorn who insisted on a proper contract between these Jamaican missionaries and the Basel Mission. The agreement stipulated among other things,^[9] that:

• The form of public worship and the rules of the Moravian Church in regard to church discipline were to be maintained.
• The West Indians were to undertake to serve the mission willingly. In return the mission would take care of all their needs for the first two years.
• The Basel Mission would provide houses for the West Indians and give them land for farming on which they could work one day per week.
• After five years, if anyone wanted to return to Jamaica, the Basel Mission would pay the passage, provided that they had not been guilty of moral aberration.^[9]

The provision which allowed the West Indian Moravians to use their own form of worship and discipline was an indication of the extent to which both the Moravians and the Basel Mission were prepared to go in order to enlist Afro-Caribbean Christians in the mission; that was the commencement of a new and effective model in mission which had profound effects on the indigenous community in Ghana.^[9][13]

Before their departure from Jamaica, an emotional farewell service was held at the Fairfield Moravian Church for the missionaries and their families.^[9] Amidst tears and hugs, the West Indian emigrants made it known to their families and church congregations telling them: “When we go to Africa, we go not to a foreign country. Africa is our country and our home. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were taken from there and brought here. We go there to witness the Grace of God not only to the European, but also to the African and our only prayer is that the eyes of the Africans whom we regard as our brothers may be opened to see Jesus Christ as Saviour of the World.” ^[9][10][22]

In an allegory of the Biblical Joseph narrative, a team of 24 Jamaicans and one Antiguan (6 distinct families and 3 bachelors) sailed from the Jamaican Port of Kingston on 8 February 1843 aboard the Irish brigantine, The Joseph Anderson, rented for £600, and arrived in Christiansborg, Gold Coast on Easter Sunday, 16 April 1843 at about 8 p.m. local time (GMT) after sixty-eight days and nights of voyage, enduring a 5-day tropical storm on the Caribbean sea, shortage of fresh water and an oppressive heat aboard the vessel. ^[9][10] A short welcome ceremony was held for them by the Basel Mission at the Christiansborg Castle where they were warmly received by Edvard James Arnold Carstensen, the Danish Governor at the time together with George Lutterodt, a personal friend of Andreas Riis who had earlier been Acting Governor of the Gold Coast.^[9][10]

Apart from A. W. Clerk, other missionary recruits doubled as skilled craftsmen:^[2]

• Joseph Miller, a farm worker, with his wife, Mary Miller and children, Rose Ann, Robert and Catherine
• John Rochester, a cooper, with his wife Mary, sister, Ann and son John Powel Rochester
• James Greene, a carpenter, with his wife Catherine and son Robert
• John Hall, a rum distiller and his wife Mary and son Andrew
• James G. Mullings, a domestic servant, with his wife Margarethe and daughter, Catharine Elisa
• Edward Walker, a farm worker, with wife, Sarah and son John
• David Robinson, a farm worker
• Jonas Horsford of Antigua

In addition, the West Indians were accompanied by a school teacher named Catherine Mulgrave who later became the Headmistress of the Danish-run Christiansborg Castle Mulatto Girls’ School in Osu, Accra.^[26][27] Riis also had the Reverend J. Widmann, a Jamaican clergyman as his assistant. They also had donkeys, horses, mulls and other animals and agricultural seeds and cuttings such as mango seedlings which they were going to introduce to the Gold Coast economy.^{[9][26][28][27]} Other tropical seedlings brought by the West Indian missionaries include cocoa, coffee, breadnut, breadfruit, guava, yam, cassava, plantains, cocoyam, variety of banana species and pear.^[22]  Cocoyam, for example, is now a Ghanaian staple.^[22] Later on in 1858, the missionaries experimented with cocoa planting at Akropong, more than two decades before Tetteh Quarshie brought cocoa seedlings to the Gold Coast from the island of Fernando Po.^[22]

Mission entreprise at Akropong

Majority of the West Indians relocated to Akropong between May and June 1843.The local people received the West Indians with enthusiasm but were later disappointed “because we (the West Indians) did not bring them money and brandy” as remarked by one of the missionaries, Joseph Miller.^[9] Nonetheless, they settled in and wholly “trusted the Akuapem people” and formed close friendships with the natives who became their interpreters as they could not originally communicate in the local Twi language; they later incorporated Akan vocabulary into their Jamaican Patois.^[9] The political unrest in Akropong within the period 1839 to 1850 stalled the missionary effort.^[9]

Clerk and his colleagues started to work immediately since the houses they were promised were actually in disrepair.^[9] Per historical literature, they built the first brick and stone houses in Akropong and the area of West Indian settlement became known as Hanover, a connection to the parish (region) in northwest Jamaica.^[9] Hanover was described as a “community lined with mango trees” as seen in Jamaican neighbourhoods even today.^[9] There is even a Hanover Street in Akropong built circa 1860: the street of little stone houses built by the Jamaicans which now runs parallel to the north boundary of the Presbyterian Training College of Education (PTC).^[9] There is still a well called Jamaica in Akropong that was built by Clerk and his colleagues dating back to the 1850s.^{[9][2][29][25]}

Initially, Riis had to be master of all trades: pastor, administrator, bursar, accountant, carpenter, architect and a public relations officer between the Mission and the traditional rulers.^[10] As more missionaries were recruited for the mission, the burden of administrator increased. Riis and another Basel missionary, Simon Suss was forced by the situation to trade and barter in order to get money to buy food and other needs of his expanding mission staff and local workers.^[10][29][25] The missionaries faced many difficulties and one of the many charges leveled against them by detractors was that they had become commercial traders instead of church missionaries.^[10] Riis and his men started evangelizing to the rural people around Akropong, so the Basel Mission became colloquially known as “rural or bush” church.^[10] Riis wanted to tackle paganism inland and to learn the Akan language spoken more widely in the Gold Coast. Riis as a disciplinarian dismissed an Americo-Liberian missionary George Thompson who failed in his mission at Osu in 1845.^[10]

Challenges in the early days were not uncommon.^[2][29][25] It was documented that "by January 1845 some of the West Indian Christians had grown weary of the Christian experiment and wrote to the Basel Mission requesting repatriation to the West Indies but the mission refused” citing the signed agreement.^[2][29][25] In 1848, a few West Indian immigrants opted to return to Jamaica upon the expiration of the 5-year residency requirement of the original contract with the Basel Mission.^[25] David Robinson died in 1850 in the Gold Coast from persistent illness.^[2][29][25] As tensions continued to rise between the Basel Mission and the West Indians, the Walkers became disenchanted, left the mission station at Akropong and relocated to Accra before permanently settling in Cape Coast.^[2][29][25]

Five Caribbean families remained to form the nucleus of the African Christian community at Akropong: Alexander Worthy Clerk, John Hall, Joseph Miller, James Gabriel Mullings, John Powel Rochester and their respective families.^[2][29][25] According to historical archives,“…the mission took steps to secure farming land for the West Indian families that decided to stay. The mission purchased land near Adami for the Miller and the Hall families and at Adobesum on the road to Amanprobi for the Mullings and Rochester families. Land was secured for the Clerk family in Aburi at the place called Little Jamaica today.” ^[2][29][25]

Contributions to education

Clerk and his fellow Caribbean missionaries were self-motivated and adapted quickly despite the initial homesickness and learnt the indigenous languages of Akan and Ga.^[9] The missionaries composed new local language hymns, translated church hymns into Ga and Akan from English and German, built stone houses, wells and schools, set up large farms and taught the local people to read and write vastly improving literacy in the region.^{[9][26][28][27]} In 1848, thirty-seven girls, twenty-five boys and seven children of the West Indians attended the newly set-up, United Akropong School with Clerk as a founding schoolmaster.^[2][29][25] The West Indian children who were taught at the school included Andrew Hall, Rosina Miller, Robert Miller, Catherine Miller, Elizabeth Mullings, Ann Rochester and John Rochester. The girls’ school was later transferred to Aburi in 1854 to become the Girls’ Senior School, predecessor to the present-day Aburi Girls’ Secondary School.^[2][29][25] Clerk and other missionaries also trained native catechists to help them in their evangelical work and play significant roles in the Basel Mission^[9][26][27] at the then newly established Basel Mission Training College in 1848 (now Presbyterian Training College of Education)^[9] as the second oldest higher educational institution in West Africa after Fourah Bay College (founded in 1827)^[30] in Freetown, Sierra Leone.^[31]

A few years earlier, on 27 November 1843, an English language all boys’ boarding middle school, The Salem School was opened at Christiansborg, the oldest existing school founded by the Basel Mission. The founding educators were all missionaries: Jamaicans, Alexander Worthy Clerk and Catherine Mulgrave (born 1827) as well as George Thompson, a German-trained Americo-Liberian missionary.^[11] Mulgrave was born in Angola but raised in Jamaica after being rescued as a five-year old from Portuguese slave traders.^[11] She recalled her mother calling her by the Angolan name “Gewe” as a child and was adopted by the then Governor of Jamaica, Earl of Mulgrave and his wife, Lady Mulgrave who educated her at the Female Refuge School followed by teacher training at the Mico Institution in Kingston, Jamaica.^[1][2] The West Indians introduced English as the preferred medium of instruction in schools and this gained wide acceptance after the Danes sold their forts and castles and forts on the eastern part of the Gold Coast including Osu, to the British in 1850.^[11] In the 19th century, the name Salem described that part of town where the early European Basel missionaries had settled together with their converts. Originally, the term Salem included the church, the school and other buildings in the Christian quarter of the town^[11] The school was built around a quadrangle with the classrooms on one side, dormitories on the other and the headmaster’s and teachers’ residences on the other side. This arrangement kept teachers and pupils in constant touch with one another.^[11]

The school curriculum was rigorous: It included English and Ga languages, arithmetic, geography, history, religious knowledge, nature study, hygiene, handwriting and music.^[11] There was also instruction in arts and crafts, including pottery, carpentry, basket and mat weaving and practical lessons in agriculture on the school farm.^[11] Christian religious training was core to the curriculum with compulsory church attendance required of all pupils.^[11] A strict disciplinary code, based on austere living was enforced.^[11]

The early years of the school were difficult. Within a year of its establishment, Clerk was sent to Akropong to start a similar school there.^[11] In 1854, the British authorities bombarded the town of Osu for two days after the indigenes refused to pay the newly imposed poll-tax.^[11] Several parts of the town were destroyed. The young school together with a large number of new African converts moved to Abokobi. The school was transferred back to Osu to the place called Salem around 1857.^[11] Later, similar Salem schools were established in Peki, La, Teshie, Odumase, Ada Foah, Kibi, Abetifi and Nsaba.^[11]

Many of the school’s alumni later became doctors, lawyers, teachers, professors, engineers, civil servants and accountants in the colonial era.^[11] The Christian-rooted Basel training the Salem alumni received in their formative years instilled in them a strong sense of noblesse oblige.^[11] From the mid nineteenth century to the latter part of the twentieth century, Salem old boys dominated many facets of public life and society, and formed a nucleus of the nouvelle haute bourgeoisie in the Gold Coast colonial social hierarchy.^[11]

Despite being highly educated by all standards; self-taught and multilingual in several Ghanaian and European languages (Ga, Twi, English, Jamaican Creole and possibly German the European Committee in Basel never accorded Clerk the full respect he deserved as a missionary and educator during his lifetime.^[9] He and his other Caribbean colleagues were instead seen by the Europeans as having the same status as administrative assistants, leading sometimes to strained relations with the Basel Mission.^[9]

Personal life and ancestry

In 1848, Clerk married Pauline Hesse, the "mulatress" daughter of a Gold Coast-based German-descended colonial merchant and a Ga-Dangme woman from Osu, Accra.^[2][3][4] Hesse was Basel Mission-trained^[2] and educated at the Danish language-run Christiansborg Castle School ^[6]in Osu.^[32] Hesse's schoolmates included her sister, Regina Hesse and the Gold Coast Basel Mission pastor and historian, Carl Christian Reindorf, whose semnial book, The History of the Gold Coast and Asante, was published in 1895. ^{[32][33][34][35]} The Christiansborg Castle School was very similar to the Cape Coast Castle School established by the Anglican vicar, the Reverend Thompson and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) affiliated to the Church of England^[36] Danish was the medium of instruction at the Christiansborg School.^[11] The castle schools were established by the European Governors to educate the Euro-African mulatto children of European men and Gold Coast African women for eventual employment as administrative assistants in the colonial civil service.^[36][21] Later on, Hesse-Clerk became a small business owner and commercial trader.^[2]

The couple had twelve children but one died at birth: Caroline (Mrs. Svaniker), John Patrick Gardiner, Louisa, Ophelia, Charles Emmanuel, Richard, Nicholas Timothy, Jane (Mrs. Bruce), Mary Anne, Matilda Johanna (Mrs. Lokko) and Christian Clerk who died in his youth in a drowning accident in the Gulf of Guinea.^[37][38]

Clerk was a descendant of 18th century West African slaves, possibly of Asante origin per some oral narratives, and from the middle belt of present day Ghana, who were forcibly brought to the Caribbean island to work on sugar plantations at the height of the transatlantic slave trade.^[9][14][15] Genealogical research based on a registry of Jamaican births and baptisms between 1752 and 1920 shows that his ancestor, likely Clerk's paternal grandfather, was a man named John Clerk.^[39] Moreover, on the basis of identical names given to some of Alexander W. Clerk's children and grandchildren,^[37] it is almost certain that older members of his extended family included James Shaw and Mary Ann Clerk, both baptised on 21 November 1793 at St. James, Trelawny in the county of Cornwall, Jamaica and whose father, John Clerk (the older) was A. W. Clerk's probable grandfather.^[39] His other relations might have included Fanny, Richard Brian and John Clerk (the younger), all christened on 30 August 1798 in Hanover, Jamaica.^[39]

Furthermore, A. W. Clerk is the patriarch of the historically notable Clerk family of Accra, Ghana by virtue of his 1843 arrival to the Gold Coast as a bachelor and his subsequent 1848 marriage to Pauline Hesse.^[40]

Death and legacy

Clerk died of natural causes in 1906 at the age of eighty-six^{[5][6][40][7]} at his home in Aburi, 20 miles (32 km) north of Accra. He was buried next to his wife, Pauline Hesse-Clerk at the old Basel Mission Cemetery in Aburi.^[6][7]

During World War I, German missionaries working left the Gold Coast and Scottish Presbyterian missionaries came and served the Christians of the Moravian Church.^[9] Sometime after the war ended, the Germans sought to renew their dominant influence but the Gold Coast Christians declared a strong preference for the Presbyterian Church brought there by the Scots.

In a fitting tribute to the legacy of Clerk, other West Indian missionaries and the Basel Mission, the British Governor of the Gold Coast during World War I, Frederick Gordon Guggisberg, reacted to the expulsion of Basel Mission as alien security risk from the Gold Coast by lamenting that, the forced departure was “the greatest blow which education in this country has ever suffered;” describing their work as the “first and foremost as regards quality of education and character training” – a testament of the mission’s approach to combining academic study with practical training for life.^[12]

The Presbyterian Church of Ghana today duly remembers and recognizes Clerk for his pioneering role in the Protestant Christian movement in Ghana.^[9] The Presbyterian Church of Ghana continues to maintain much of the Jamaican church liturgy, order and discipline that were imported to Ghana in the 19th century and is a strong mission minded one.^[9][14] The Presbyterian Church in Ghana currently has nearly 1 million members constituting about a quarter of the Ghanaian Christian Protestant demographic and about 4% of the national population.^[41] The Presbyterian Church of Ghana today has instituted "Ebenezer Day", a special Sunday designated in the church almanac to honor the memories, selfless work and toil of the missionaries in the early years.^[41]

In addition to increased access to education, A. W. Clerk and other Basel Mission and West Indian missionaries were also instrumental in the expansion of hospitals and healthcare as well as the development of infrastructure including roads, and the growth of commerce and agriculture to support church mission activities. ^[24] Today, the church maintains schools, colleges and health centres in many cities and towns in Ghana including Abetifi, Aburi, Agogo, Bawku, Donkorkrom, Dormaa Ahenkro and Enchi. ^[24] In order to preserve the old culture, the usage of vernacular as medium of ministry continues to be emphasised by the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. ^[24]

Clerk's lineage or progeny has played pioneering roles in the development of architecture, church development, civil service, education, health services, journalism, medicine, natural sciences, public administration, public health public policy and urban planning in the Gold Coast and modern Ghana.^[27] His son, Nicholas Timothy Clerk was a Basel-trained theologian who served as the first Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast from 1918 to 1932 and initiated the groundbreaking for the establishment of Presbyterian Boys' Secondary School in 1938.^[8][11][12] Peter Hall, the son of John Hall, Clerk’s fellow Jamaican missionary, was also elected the First Moderator of Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast in 1918.^[26][42]

References