First African ordained into the ministry of the Anglican Church.

Quaque was the son of Cudjo, a Fanti chief from Cape Coast Castle in the Gold Coast (Ghana). When Cudjo was asked by Thomas Thompson, the first missionary with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) in West Africa, to select three boys for education in England, he included his son Philip. Quaque spent eleven years in England, forgetting his mother tongue but proceeding to baptism in 1759 and ordination in 1765. His first wife was English. In 1765 he returned under the auspices of the SPG as “missionary, catechist and schoolmaster to the negroes of the Gold Coast of Africa.” Later his son, Samuel, also educated in England, assisted him. It was from those educated at the school established in his memory (1882) that the invitation to the Methodist mission was extended from the so-called Cape Coast Bible Band. It was Quaque who had originally implanted in the members of the Bible Band a desire for Bible teaching.

Timothy Yates

Bibliography

F. L. Bartels, The Roots of Ghana Methodism *(1965) and “Philip Quaque, 1741-1816,” in *Transactions of the Gold Coast and Togoland Historical Society, vol. 1, pt. 5 (1955); C. F. Pascoe, Two Hundred Years of the SPG, 1701-1900 (1901); Margaret Preistley, West African Trade and Coast Society (1969); H. P. Thompson, Into All Lands (1951).

This article is reproduced, with permission, from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, copyright © 1998, by Gerald H. Anderson, W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. All rights reserved.