When was Catherine Elisabeth Mulgrave born?
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Catherine Elisabeth Mulgrave also Gewe (19 November 1827 ─ 14 January 1891) was an Angolan-born Jamaican Moravian pioneer educator, administrator and missionary who accompanied a group of 24 Caribbean mission recruits from Jamaica and Antigua and arrived in the Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg, now Osu, Accra in Ghana in 1843. Mulgrave was a leading figure in pedagogy and the education programme for girls in both Jamaica and on the Gold Coast. She was the Basel Mission’s first female teacher active on the Gold Coast. Under the auspices of the society, she played a pioneering role in the Christian women ministry of the Protestant movement in colonial Ghana. Catherine Mulgrave was also one of the first African woman teachers in the missionary educationalist system in Africa.
Catherine Mulgrave
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Catherine Mulgrave was born in Luanda, Angola, circa 1827. Some scholars such as Swiss German church historian, Hans Werner Debrunner posited that Mulgrave may have been born earlier in around 1825 or in 1826. Other records list 1820 and 1822. However, records at the "Basel Mission Archives" list her exact date of birth as 19 November 1827. Her father was a prince, the son of an African traditional chief who worked as an assistant to a merchant in their port town. Other sources state that her father was a respected African Christian merchant with European influences. Her mother, Sophina was a baptised mulatress who belonged to a Christian family of Catholic origin – most likely Euro-African of Portuguese and indigenous African descent. Since the 15th century, circa 1450, the Portuguese had a long-established presence on the Angolan coast through commerce and trade with BaKongo Empire. Mulgrave recalled her mother calling her by the Angolan name "“Gewe”" (pronounced ""Geve"") as a child. It is said that her European maternal grandfather had his entire family, including his elen daughters, one son and grandchildren, both Portuguese and African, vaccinated against smallpox. The port town of Luanda was described as, "“A seaside town with a large church, a school, two forts, great European houses. (...) The city itself has a governor, a bishop, monks various cowls, vestments, choirboys, images of saints, holy water."" When she was about five years old in April 1833, Gewe and her two cousins, while playing and fishing on the beach one early evening, were abducted by Portuguese slave traders on the coast of São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda, now Luanda. The slave traders arrived in a small boat with some sailors and attempted to lure the three children with sweets. One child managed to run away before she could be captured into the boat. The sailors paddled their boat to an anchored slave ship nearby, the "Heroina" where the two girls were greeted by a friendly captain, "Sabin from St. Thomas" who was also a slave trader. The two girl prisoners were kept in the captain's cabin. Hundreds of captives, estimated to be about 303, were in the ship and the two girls witnessed the brutality visited upon prisoners who tried to break free. That night, the ship sailed from the Angolan coast, heading for Havana, Cuba. After a few weeks, land came into view. British colonial authorities patrolling the high seas inspected the ship but they did not discover the slaves who were hidden in a basement. Near the southern Jamaican coast, a tropical storm alarmed and distressed everyone aboard the Portuguese schooner - the vessel crushed against a rock and began leaking before it eventually sunk. Some swam to safety on the shore while others clung to the wooden mast while they waited to be rescued. Gewe and her cousin were among the few survivors rescued from the wreckage and taken to Old Harbour, Saint Catherine Jamaica. The captain of the ship with his crew of kidnappers were arrested by the British authorities in Jamaica and jailed in Kingston as the system of slavery was already in the early phase of abolishment. The "apprenticeship act", granting immediate and full freedom to children six years of age and younger, and an intermediate status for those older, was also enacted 1833, kicking off the step-by-step abolishment of the system of slavery in Jamaica. The surviving captives aboard the Portuguese vessel were set free. Earlier in 1831/32, a bloody slave rebellion on the island had kicked off the struggle towards freedom. The official Act of Emancipation came into full force throughout the West Indies on 1 August 1834.
The two girls were adopted by the then Governor of Jamaica between 1832 and 1834, Earl of Mulgrave (1797–1863) and his wife, Maria Liddell, Lady Mulgrave Maria Liddell (1798–1882) who later became Lady Normanby and had just returned from Britain on a short trip. The Earl of Mulgrave was created Marquess of Normanby in 1835 and was styled as Constantine Henry Phipps, 1st Marquess of Normanby. The Mulgraves gave the two girls their surname and Gewe was given her adoptive mother's name.. In the first few months at the Governor's official residence in Spanish Town, they were home-schooled by the Governor's wife who was a devout Christian, most likely of Anglican faith. In 1833, the Earl and Lady Mulgrave were on an official visit to inspect the "Female Refuge School" in Fairfield, Manchester Parish. Between 1831 and 1837, the Moravian Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands increased its general operations in evangelism and educational initiatives in the West Indies. The Moravians sought to educate liberated slaves under the apprenticeship system. The refuge school had been established a year earlier in 1832 by English Moravian women missionaries. The school population had 24 orphan girls, who came from all over the island to attend the institution. Catherine Mulgrave and her cousin were sent to the boarding school. She spent five and a half years at the girls’ school. In January 1834, the Governor and Lady Mulgrave left Jamaica. They had wished to take Catherine and her cousin with them, but Lady Mulgrave suffered from sporadic illness and upon medical advice, the Mulgraves decided to leave them in Jamaica. Furthermore, the Clerk of the Mulgraves advised them against taking Catherine to England due to climatic conditions. They nonetheless maintained correspondence with Catherine and regularly remitted funds for her upkeep in Jamaica. After separation from her Victorian aristocratic foster family, Catherine Mulgrave was taken in by the Moravian mission in Fairfield, Manchester Parish. Catherine Mulgrave then proceeded to the Mico Institution in Kingston, Jamaica for teacher-training. Persistent illness forced her to leave the normal school after just nine months.
Catherine Mulgrave
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In 1842, when the Basel Mission recruitment team visited Jamaica, Americo-Liberian, George Peter Thompson fell in love with the then 16-year old Catherine Mulgrave. Born in 1819, Thompson was orphaned as a child, he was taken to Europe by the Basel missionary, the Rev. J. F. Sessing. He was raised in a Beuggen mission house in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, from where the Pietist movement originated. Thompson had been educated as a mission assistant in Basel Mission training school and seminary in Basel, Switzerland. Upon the recommendation of the Moravian mission and the tacit approval of the Basel mission, Mulgrave though initially undecided accepted Thompson's proposal. It is on record that her patroness, Lady Mulgrave, who she was still in contact with, opposed to the union but before she could voice her concerns, the Basel team had already left for the Gold Coast, together with the recruited Caribbean missionaries and Mulgrave who had then married Thompson on 11 December 1842. Catherine Mulgrave had suffered a miscarriage on the voyage from the West Indies to Africa. Thompson and Mulgrave had their first child, a girl named Rosina in 1844. In 1846, she gave birth to her second child, a son baptised George.
Catherine Mulgrave
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In 1870s, Catherine's husband began to have bouts of exhaustion and illness. In the spring of 1872, he went to Gerlingen with his whole family to recuperate for a year. On their return to the Gold Coast in 1873, they lived and worked at Abokobi until 1876, when they moved to Christiansborg. Shortly thereafter, Zimmermann fell ill again, and returned to Gerlingen, Germany with Catherine Mulgrave via Basel, Switzerland in September 1876, where he died at the end of the same year, on 13 December 1876, at the age of fifty-one. Accompanied by her three younger children, Mulgrave then returned to the Gold Coast in the spring of 1877 as a missionary widow and lived at Christiansborg, her longtime adopted home, until her death, fourteen years later, in 1891.
Catherine Mulgrave
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Zimmermann and Mulgrave made the Gold Coast their home. They had six children but only five, two daughters and three sons lived to adulthood. Their first child, Johanna was born in 1852. The second child, Johannes was born 1854. Their second daughter, Auguste Amalia, born in Christiansborg in 1858, was named after August and Amalie Steinhauser, a German missionary couple. Auguste Amalia was educated in Wurttemberg, Germany and became a teacher at the Basel Mission Girls’ Boarding School at Aburi. Between 1889 and 1892, she was a mission teacher at the Christiansborg Girls’ School. Mulgrave's son Gottfried, born in Odumase in 1861, later became an employee of the Basel Mission. Their last child Christoph was born in 1866. In 1871, Mulgrave's two eldest sons Johannes and Gottfried were sent to the mission house in Basel. Auguste Zimmermann was twice married to mission merchants. She first married Josua Leuze, a merchant with the company called Victor in 1883. Leuze joined the NMG in 1885 and was transferred to the Basel Mission in 1886 where he worked until his death in 1888. She then married the Basel missionary, Oskar Thal in 1892, becoming widowed for the second time in 1896. She returned to Germany and died in Korntal in 1923.
Catherine Mulgrave
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After the 1854 bombardment of Christiansborg by the H. M. S. Scourge, following the riots against the British poll tax ordinance, Zimmermann sought refuge at the Methodist mission house in Accra. Together with his family and students, he was evacuated to Abokobi, 15 miles (24 kilometres) inland from Accra where, with the assistance of another missionary, August Steinhauser, he set up a small Christian village community. At Abokobi, Catherine Mulgrave established a girls’ boarding school before staying briefly at Akropong. In 1858, the Zimmermann-Mulgrave household returned to Christiansborg and Catherine became a missionary wife again and resumed leading the weekly women's prayer meetings, usually held on Tuesday evening. Catherine Mulgrave gained respect from other missionary wives like Amalie Steinhauser who was on friendly terms with her. Mrs. Steinhauser had within that period lost her husband, the Basel missionary, August Steinhauser. Catherine and Amalie jointly paid regular house visits to women congregants of the church in Christiansborg.
Catherine Mulgrave
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In June 1851, Johannes Zimmermann married Catherine Mulgrave, an Afro-Jamaican divorced woman who was teaching in the girls' school at Christiansborg. The Mission Society in Basel was shocked by this marriage because Zimmermann had not asked for permission from the Home Committee. Facing possible dismissal from the Basel Mission for marrying a divorced African woman, Zimmermann remarked in defiance, ""I am marrying Africa...well, the African liana has climbed the German oak tree."" As punishment, the Home Committee, suspended Zimmermann, stripping him of his rights to travel home to Europe every year on furlough, effectively making him a local missionary on the Gold Coast for the next twenty-two years. Mulgrave was born in Angola but raised in Jamaica after being rescued as a six-year old from Portuguese slave traders who had kidnapped her. They brought her onto a slave ship from Africa to Jamaica. Near the coast of Jamaica, the ship got in distress and sank. Catherine Mulgrave was however rescued from the wreckage. 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. Mulgrave had earlier been married to the Americo-Liberian, George Peter Thompson who had been educated in Basel Mission training school in Basel, Switzerland as a mission assistant. In 1843, the young couple emigrated to the Gold Coast with a group of Jamaican missionaries from Kingston. Thompson and Mulgrave however got divorced six years later. Zimmermann and Mulgrave made the Gold Coast their home. Five of their six children lived to adulthood: two daughters and three sons. His dream of creating a German-African settlement in Abokobi never materialised although his descendants still live in Ghana. Furthermore, his own children and youngest brother, Christoph also married African spouses, indicating that his family was acclimated to the indigenous environment.
Johannes Zimmermann
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As a missionary in her own right, Catherine Mulgrave became a Christian evangelist to the urban women population at Christiansborg. In 1848, she assembled girls and young women at Osu to form the first recorded group of the "“Women’s Class”" or "“Women’s Fellowship”" – a signature feature of the present day Presbyterian Church of Ghana called the "Presbyterian Women's Fellowship". The 1848 gathering was to learn more about Christianity, the sharing or exchange of spirituality and sisterhood of the faith. This women's fellowship was a model borrowed from the Moravian Church in Jamaica as believers of the denomination there referred to one another as brethren, which encompassed the sisterhood. The Moravians in Jamaica also practised an organisation of choirs or units in which Christian-based education was promulgated.
Catherine Mulgrave
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According to the German church historian and theologian, Ulrike Sill, it is probable Mulgrave contemplated leaving the Basel Mission for the Wesleyan Methodist mission for higher pay. After her divorce, a Wesleyan Methodist missionary, possibly Henry Wharton, had expressed interest in Catherine Mulgrave through the missionary Johannes Stanger. Stanger discouraged the potential union, citing its possibility to generate malicious gossip. Stanger also wrote to the Home Committee on 10 October 1850, suggesting remarriage for Mulgrave.
Catherine Mulgrave
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She wrote to the newly appointed Basel Inspector, Joseph Josenhans on 28 February 1850 asking him to intercede on her behalf, as the dissolution of her marriage had caused pain and distress in her heart. Ten months later in December 1850, she wrote a follow-up letter to the Inspector about her continuing financial challenges. A month earlier in November 1850, Josenhans wrote to the missionary Dieterle, stating his openness to Mulgrave marrying one of the unmarried European Basel missionaries, though he knew the Home Committee forbade such a union. In the letter, he also extolled Mulgrave's “gifted mind” and “decided piety.”
Catherine Mulgrave