ABSTRACT
European settlers abroad were pioneers in many senses. The settlers brought their own dominees with them; but these men were chaplains to the Dutch rather than missionaries to the Africans. A stream of missionaries eventually followed in Ghana Joseph Dunwell's wake, almost all of them succumbing to the unaccustomed climate within a brief period. The exceptions were Thomas Birch Freeman and Henry Wharton, who each had African blood in his veins. He believed in giving people something to do, and often that meant building their own church. It was this sound practical instinct that made him a great pioneer and carried him to Kumasi, Abeokuta, and the heart of Dahomey, at a time when the death-throes of the slave trade and the superstitions of the people made his journeys really dangerous. It was in 1842 that Freeman first took ship for Nigeria. It came about because some of the Christian ex-slaves in Freetown spoke Yoruba.
