Category: History – Civilization
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Thomas Birch Freeman was a Methodist minister and first preacher of the Christian gospel in Nigeria. Freeman was a mulatoo of black and English parentage, born in 1809 in Hampshire, England. He arrived in West Africa in 1838, a year after he was accepted as a Methodist missionary. At this time, some Saros who had…
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C.M.S. Grammar School is Nigeria’s first secondary school, established in June 1859 by Church Missionary Society, a Christian organization dedicated to the promotion of the faith. Herbert Macaulay’s father, Thomas Babington, as founder, had served as the school’s first principal. Primary schools in Lagos at this time were not up to ten. Expectedly, it was…
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Nathaniel King was the first Nigerian to practice modern medicine in his own country. Nathaniel was born 14 July 1847 in Freetown to a Yoruba Clergyman, Rev.Thomas King, who together with Ajayi Crowther, translated several catechisms and portions of the Bible into Nigerian dialects. Nathaniel King returned with his missionary father to Abeokuta where he…
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Ladies Club was the elite social group of Victoria era Lagos consisting of high-breed ladies, mostly Sierra Leoneanian returnees of Yoruba origin. A major face of this group was Victoria Davies, goddaughter of the Queen of England, and daughter of the famous Sarah Forbes Bonnetta, also the British crown’s protégé. Other members of this group…
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James Johnson; Victorian era preacher in Lagos, greatly renowned for his devoutness and Pan-Africanist ideas. Though a Nigerian from Ijesha land, James was born in Sierra Leone in 1838 and he had the privilege of schooling at Fourah Bay College, his father being one of the slaves that were freed by the British anti-slavery surveillance…
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John Randle was a 19th Century Nigerian physician and co-founder of Nigeria’s first political party, called the People’s Union. He was a contemporary of Dr. Obadaih Johnson at Sierra Leone College and Edinburg University. Randle was a specialist in Yellow Fever, benefactor of Fourah Bay College, and temporary member of Legislative Council under Sir William…
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James Pinson Labulo Davies , called Captain JPL Davies was the wealthy Lagos businessman and merchant of the 19th Century who pioneered cocoa farming in West Africa. Davies is often described in literatures as the most colourful Lagosian of his time. Born in August 1828, Labulo schooled at the CMS Grammar School in Freetown before…
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Oyo in pre-annexation times, have had its people organized into a complex, highly structured society, having rules and unwritten constitutions. Had the British met them in this state, they would have marveled on how this people, considered to have lived in the Dark Continent could have evolved a system so pragmatic. The truth lives one…