[6][8][12] His Danish father, Jacob Protten, alias "Prot", "Prodt", "Prott", was a soldier stationed with the garrison at the Christiansborg Castle in Osu.

[6] Archival records indicate that Christian Protten's maternal uncle, Ashangmo, also Foli Bebe or Ofori Bembeneen was a coastal chieftain in the former Portuguese slave market of Little Popo (Aného) in modern-day Togo, and ruled the Guin/Ge State there from 1694 to 1727 or 1731–33.

On the day of his departure, as he was rowed out to the waiting ship, his relatives stood on the beach, hoping the canoe would capsize and Protten would return to safety on the shore.

[1][2][14] In 1735, Christian Protten met Nikolaus Ludwig, Reichsgraf von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf (1700–60), the Bishop of the Moravian Church, at the Danish court.

[1][2][14] Also in 1735, Frederick Pedersen Svane, a Ga- Danish Euro-African from Christiansborg (Osu) graduated in the arts and philosophy from the University of Copenhagen, befriended a Moravian, Carl Adolph von Plessen.

[14][18] In 1737, Christian Protten, along with Moravia native, Henry Huckoff, sailed from Amsterdam, the Netherlands to the Gold Coast to begin a new life as Moravian missionaries.

Presumptiveness and a high opinion of oneself only prostitute a person and carry no weight with the Saviour.”[14] He was alleged to have been prone to fits of uncontrollable anger.

Prior his departure to the Gold Coast, Count Zinzendorf instructed, "Dear Christian: In order to convert the Moors, you must leave all your Moorish bad habits in Amsterdam".

[1][2][14] According to the Gold Coast historian and Basel Mission pastor, Carl Christian Reindorf, Protten visited his relatives at Aného in September 1737.

His plans to start a school at Elmina were thwarted by the Dutch Governor at the time, Martinus François de Bordes who viewed Protten as a Danish spy and detained him for three years until 1740.

In 1741, upon the receipt of a letter of invitation from von Zinzendorf, Christian Protten returned to Herrnhut, after failing to win converts on the Gold Coast.

[14] In 1757, he received his commission from the Royal Chartered Danish West India and Guinea Company to become a teacher and a preacher at his alma mater, the Christiansborg Castle School.

[1][2][14] Earlier in 1764, he had submitted a proposal to the Danish Crown, King Frederick V of Denmark (reigned 1746–66), to establish a boarding school at Christiansborg which would include a curriculum in indigenous languages, highlighting the importance he attached to literacy in his mother tongue.

In the final decades of the 18th century, several other Moravian missionaries who were sent from Europe did not survive beyond the first few months due to tropical afflictions, particularly malaria and yellow fever.

[14] In 1764, Christian Jacob Protten wrote his magnum opus, "En nyttig Grammaticalsk Indledelse til Tvende hidintil gandske ubekiendte Sprog, Fanteisk og Acraisk," an introductory treatise to the grammar of the Ga and Fante languages which was published in Copenhagen.

[1][2][14] Seen as his greatest achievement, the text acted as a trilingual (Danish, Fante, Ga) catechesis manual for European missionaries who yearned to learn the two Ghanaian native languages.

[39][40] Moreover, as a mulatto or an Atlantic Creole, Protten was able to hone his linguistic talents and abilities by blending his African upbringing and his European education, through a spatial awareness of the missionary settings he lived in during the 1700s.