Alfred Saker

In 1858 he led a Baptist Mission that relocated from the then Spanish island of Fernando Po and landed in Southern Cameroons.

According to the record, he bought land from indigenous Bimbia chiefs, established a seaside settlement christened Victoria after the reigning British Empress.

[1][2] He was a leader of the early British Baptist missionaries that established churches on Fernando Po Island and Cameroon.

Birthplace – Childhood – Youth Alfred Saker was born on 21 July 1814 in Borough Green, in Wrotham, Kent.

The church soon called him to exercise his ministry in a more formal way, and for some time, at their request, he occupied every other Sabbath the little chapel at Plaxtol.

[7] In February 1840, in St Marys, Newington, London,[8] he was married to Helen Jessup[7][9][10] and returned to Devonport.

So began the Jamaican Baptist Missionary Society work in 1843, in Fernando Po, today Equatorial Guinea near the coast of Cameroon.

[14] In 1853, the Spanish government, instigated by the Jesuit missionaries, insisted on the departure of the Baptists from Fernando Po, and suppressed all Protestant worship.

The converts resolved to accompany their teachers, and the whole Baptist community removed under Mr. Saker's guidance to Amboises Bay, on the mainland.

Mr. Saker's influence upon the native chiefs and their people was most successfully exercised in suppressing many of their cruel and sanguinary customs.

Shortly after his arrival at Fernando Po, the headquarters of the Baptist missionaries, he visited the tribes on the mainland at the mouth of the Cameroons River.

He induced the people to labor with something like regularity in agriculture, introducing various plants, such as bread-fruit, mangoes, oranges, and other fruits and vegetables for daily sustenance.

These productions, moreover, enabled them to obtain manufactured articles from the ships frequenting the river, and in the course of a few years a civilized community was established.

He taught his converts the industrial arts, and soon found himself surrounded by artisans of all sorts, carpenters, smiths, bricklayers, etc.

The more forward scholars soon became helpful in the printing-office work, and aided in the translation and printing of the Scriptures in the Duala tongue, which was his lifelong task.

The small group built a school, a church, and other buildings for the mission, thereby founding the city of Victoria, now Limbé (since 1982).

Fuller wrote in the period in Fernando Po about tensions between the whites from England and the former slaves from Jamaica.

This was of the opinion that the three performance Saker - Bible translation, printing and the foundation of Victoria - had been largely due to Merrick and Fuller.

[16] Alfred Saker first went to Africa in 1844 as part of a missionary team on the island of Fernando Po (now Bioko).

He envisioned great possibilities and tried to convince the English government to make this area a Crown Colony.

Mrs Saker, portrayed in her daughter's book [ 6 ]
Joseph Wilson, The first convert in Fernando Po
Joseph Merrick at an Isubu funeral, Limbe (1845).
The Conflicts with country peoples
The Cameroons that Saker laboured
Alfred Saker, Missionary to Africa, who landed, founded and named the Township Victoria. Tablet erected in memory of his devoted work to mark the Centenary of Victoria, 1858-1958
Alfred Saker College, Douala