Prosper Lemue was a pioneer French Protestant missionary in South Africa. The first French recruit of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society (PEMS), as recommended by the Reformed pastor Antoine Colani, he left in 1829 for southern Africa with Isaac Bisseux and Samuel Rolland. John Philip, the London Missionary Society (LMS) superintendent at the Cape, first directed him to Caffraria, but he finally settle in Botswana, as a colleague of the LMS pioneer Robert Moffat. He established the Motito station in 1833, working among Arutsi refugees and Korana people. In 1847 PEMS fellow missionaries called him to Lesotho to start a school for teachers and evangelists at the Carmel station. But the Afrikaner Voortrekkers overran the territory and the proposed school did not materialize. Nevertheless, Lemue remained and served the small Carmel congregation until he died.

Jean-François Zorn

Bibliography

Eugène Casalis, “Biographical Notice of the Late Reverend Prosper Lemue, French Missionary,” tr. from Journal des missions évangéliques 45 (1870); Victor Ellenberger, Un siècle de Mission au Lessouto (1833-1933) (1933); J. W. Sauer and G. M. Theal, Basutoland Records, vol. 1 (1883).

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.