Clerk family

Clerk family

Left to right: A.W. Clerk, N.T. Clerk and C.H. Clerk
Ethnicity	Ga Euro-Afro-Caribbean
Current region	Accra, Ghana
Place of origin	Fairfield, Manchester Parish, Jamaica
Members	Alexander Worthy Clerk Nicholas Timothy Clerk Carl Henry Clerk Theodore S. Clerk Matilda J. Clerk Nicholas T. Clerk George C. Clerk Alexander A. Clerk
Distinctions	architecture church development civil service education health services journalism medicine natural sciences public administration public health public policy urban planning

The Clerk family is a Ghanaian historic family that produced a number of pioneering scholars in the Gold Coast.^[1][2][3][4] Predominantly based in Accra, the Clerks were traditionally Protestant Christian and affiliated to the Presbyterian Church.^[1][2] The Clerk family is primarily a member of the Ga-Dangme coastal people of Accra^[5] and in addition, has Euro-Afro-Caribbean heritage, descending from Jamaican,^[1][6] German^[5][7][8] and Danish^[2][9] ancestry.

History

During the Gold Coast colonial era, the Clerks were among a group of thinkers, often from the coastal areas of Ghana, who flourished in the arts and sciences, across multiple familial generations.^{[1][2][5][10][11]} Some other historically important Gold Coast families, mainly from southern Ghana, of Akyem, Anlo Ewe, Fante and Ga ethnicities that thrived in various intellectual pursuits within this period include the Bartels, Brew, Casely-Hayford, Easmon, Gbeho and Ofori-Atta families.^[12][13] Other learned persons were members of the Euro-African Ga intelligentsia of Accra, linked by intermarriage, as well as trade and commerce along the Gold Coast, such as the Bannerman, Bruce, Hesse, Hutton-Mills, Meyer, Quist, Reindorf and Vanderpuije families.^[14] The Clerk family is also related through marriage to several distinguished Ga families in Accra like the Adom, Nikoi, Odamtten, Ollennu and Quao families among others.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, several prominent members of the Clerk family dominated various spheres of public life in Gold Coast society and later modern Ghana, making significant and pioneering contributions to the growth of architecture, church development, civil service, education, health services, journalism, medicine, natural sciences, public administration, public health, public policy and urban planning.^{[2][15][16][10][17][18]}

The Ghanaian Clerk family was founded by the Reverend Alexander Worthy Clerk (1820 -1906), a Jamaican Moravian missionary who arrived in the Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg (now the suburb of Osu) in Accra, Gold Coast (Ghana) on Easter Sunday, 16 April 1843,^[19][20] as part of the first group of 24 West Indian missionaries who worked under the auspices of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society of Basel, Switzerland.^[2][20] A. W. Clerk's hometown was Fairfield, a town located in Manchester Parish, Jamaica.^[5] He was also a pioneer of the precursor to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and a leader in education in colonial Ghana, establishing a boarding middle school for boys, The Salem School at Osu in 1843.^[21]

Notable members

Other notable members of the Clerk family include:

• Nicholas Timothy Clerk (1862–1961), a Basel-trained theologian and pioneering missionary was elected the First Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast.^[2] He was a founding father of the all boys' boarding high school, Presbyterian Boys' Secondary School established in 1938.^[15]
• Carl Henry Clerk (1895–1982) was an agricultural educationist, administrator, journalist, editor and church minister who served as the Fourth Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast from 1950 to 1954.^[17][22][23] From 1960 to 1963, he was also the Editor of the Christian Messenger, the news publication of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, established in 1883.^[24]
• Theodore Shealtiel Clerk (1909–1965) was the first African architect of the Gold Coast and received the Rutland Prize from the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture.^{[11][25][16][26]} He was the chief architect, town planner and first chief executive officer (CEO) of the Tema Development Corporation (TDC), a role in which he planned, designed and developed the post-independent metropolis of Tema, the location of the largest seaport in Ghana, the Tema Harbour^[16][25] In 1964, Theodore Clerk became the first President of the Ghana Institute of Architects, started in 1963, as the first professional society for the architectural practice and education in Ghana.^[27][28] 
• Matilda Johanna Clerk (1916–1984) was the first Ghanaian woman in any field to win an academic merit scholarship for university education abroad, the second Ghanaian woman to be trained in orthodox medicine as well as the third West African woman to become a medical doctor.^{[10][29][30][31][32][33]}
• Nicholas Timothy Clerk (1930–2012) was an academic, public administrator and Presbyterian minister who served as the Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), a graduate school of public policy, public administration and governance.^[15][34] He was also the Vice-chairman of the Public Services Commission of Ghana and the chairman of the Public Services Commission of Uganda from 1989 to 1990.^{[15][34][35][36]}
• George Carver Clerk (born 1931) is a botanist,^[34] Professor emeritus at the University of Ghana, Legon^[37] and a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected in 1973,^[38] and whose research focused on the ecology and phytopathology of indigenous plant diseases in Ghana and West Africa.^[39]
• Alexander Adu Clerk (born 1947) is a sleep medicine specialist and psychiatrist.^{[40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]}
• Nicholas Timothy Clerk, Jr. (born 1963) is a consultant obstetrician-gynaecologist with a specialty in ambulatory gynaecology. ^[49][50]
• Christine Alexandra Clerk (born 1967) is an epidemiologist and a malaria specialist.^{[51][52][53][54][55][56]}

References