FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. AFRICA. Commenced 1832. BISHOP BURNS, RESIDENT MISSIONARY BIshop. Members of the Conference, Preachers on Trial, and Local Preachers employed. JOHN W. ROBERTS. W. P. KENNEDY. H. H. WHITFIELD. PHILIP GROSS. S. F. WILLIAMS. J. J. MOORE, Superintendent. W. H. TYLER. N. D. Russ. J. G. THOMPSON. C. C. LOWREY. Eight Local Preachers employ- THE Annual Report of this mission was written by the Bishop in February, 1860, and is not now so fresh and applicable as we could wish. We have endeavored to add to it such items as subsequent communications have afforded. We regret that the year closing at the Conference of Janu ary, 1860, showed a reduction in the number of their active members. Two were superannuated, one was absent on leave, one was expelled, and one has since died. Toward supplying the places of these, we have given letters and such assistance as was necessary to three from this country, and hope to commend two more to their attention and confidence next spring. These colored brethren were of good promise, and were born and educated in the United States. We are glad to see that the more intelligent and promising of our free colored population are beginning to look for a home in Africa where they will be really free. Bishop Burns repeats with great earnestness their convictions that the extension of the mission into the country more largely "is a condition of both our spiritual life and growing usefulness. If we stay here we die." THE GREBOS are a large and powerful tribe, dwelling a little in the interior from Cape Palmas. They had given intimations of their desire to have our missions extended to them, but it seemed scarcely practicable with the force the Conference had. No one understood their language. A few years ago it pleased God to convert a Grebo young man, who had been recaptured in a slaver, and was landed at Sierra Leone, and there fell under the influence of the Wesleyan missions. After a pretty good religious training, and a fair trial of his piety, he returned to the vicinity of Cape Palmas, and began to preach to his countrymen in their own language. There was the foundation of the extension of the mission of the Liberia Conference to the Grebos. This young man's Christian name is Rev. C. C. Lowrey. GRAND CAPE MOUNT lies north of Monrovia, on the coast, and the country in the rear of it is inhabited by a fine intelligent race, the Veys. This region is more healthy than Monrovia. There our mission established a station a few years ago, which has prospered. Bishop Burns says: Rev. Daniel Ware, with his wife and family, have devoted themselves to the mission among the Veys. They have gone into the interior and made their homes with the people. A NEW MISSION AMONG THE GOULAS, fifty miles interior from Careysburgh, was projected, but for want of means was left to be supplied. This would extend the missions of the Conference nearly a hundred miles into the interior. We trust they will be able to do so with the appropriations for 1861. THE THROO AND LITTLE BASSA MISSIONS among the natives are inoperative, the bishop says, for want of funds. He says their policy is to have the missionary identified with the people he serves, and thus have a common civil and spiritual life with them. SCHOOLS. Week-day Schools. We have nineteen, attended by six hundred scholars. The teachers of these schools are paid by the Missionary Society. On Sunday they are required to assist in the Sunday-schools, in which there are nine hundred and thirty scholars, many of whom are members of the Church. Our High Schools, says the bishop, have been closed for want of proper teachers; and the consequence is, many of our most promising youth have gone into schools belonging to other Churches. We may add that we have expended many hundreds of dollars in educating youth for these seminaries, and we have sent out others educated elsewhere, and we hope for a better report next year. Our Monrovia Academy is reopened and reorganized, and gives promise of efficiency. We must wait on the future for fruits from White Plains and Cape Palmas Academies. Bishop Scott's schools are private schools, of from one to five native youth taken into each family of our missionary brethren, to be educated in the family as Christian children. There are now thirty-two, for which the Missionary Society allows $30 each for boarding, clothing, and instruction in letters, and domestic or industrial affairs. This plan was devised by Bishop Scott, and is of great efficiency, as it is subjected to a rigid supervision under instructions from home, for the execution of which the bishop is responsible. Our common schools in the town of Monrovia are not so numerous or capacious as they ought to be. The bishop, therefore, asked permission to close in the wide piazza on each end of the Monrovia Seminary, and thus make two common school rooms, one at each end, 60 feet by 10. This would leave the large center hall on the first floor for the High School. The bishop's residence is on the second floor. The Board approved of the plan, and made the necessary appropriation to fit up the piazzas. This will much enlarge the capacity of our mission to offer common education to the mass of children in the town. Select youth for education, in view of serving in our mission as teachers or preachers, if God should be pleased to call them ; these are selected by a committee appointed by the home authority. They are nine in number; but the General Missionary Committee could only provide for six. Must the others be turned away? We have thus given a condensed view of our educational interests in Liberia. A missionary library is asked for earnestly by Bishop Burns. By this he says he means missionary books, that they may learn the plans, prospects, and success of missions, and thus be able to train their people. But we explain a missionary library to be really more than this. As our brethren in Africa are not surrounded with books as we are in America, are there not able and liberal members of the Church who would send them valuable books as a common conference library? We would gladly receive them at the office of the corresponding secretary, and send them forward to Monrovia, and commit them to the supervision of Bishop Burns, until they became numerous enough to require a library room and a library committee. Bishop Burns pleads earnestly for means to keep the mission property in good repair, for the extension of the work into the interior, among the natives, for enlarging the means of education, and for rendering the missions more efficient generally. The General Missionary Committee have granted all they could, in view of the receipts into the treasury, and the urgent wants of our other missions at home and abroad. Native youth in families, on Bishop Scott's plan, for instruction in Select youths educated for service in the Missions.. 1 18 8 1,392 89 72 19 600 930 32 9 ASSISTANT MISSIONARIES. MRS. HENRIETTA C. MACLAY, Assistant Missionary. 66 PHEBE E. WENTWORTH, 66 ELIZA C. GIBSON, 66 NELLIE M. BALDWIN, 66 MARY E. MARTIN, MISS BEULAH WOOLSTON, 66 SALLIE H. WOOLSTON, NATIVE HELPERS. 66. 66 HU PO MI, exhorter, (licensed,) and teacher of girls' school. HU IONG MI, exhorter, (licensed ;) stationed at Ngu Kang. LABORERS. REV. R. S. MACLAY, Superintendent, by the advice of his physician, and with the consent of the mission, sailed for America in November, 1859. Rev. E. WENTWORTH has had charge of the accounts and correspondence of the mission during this year; has superintended the building of the Baltimore Female Academy, and kept up his regular appointments in Chinese and English during the year. |