Hannah Kilham

Hannah Kilham (1774–1832) née Spurr was an English Methodist and Quaker, known as a missionary and linguist active in West Africa.

[2] On 12 April 1798 Hannah Spurr became the second wife of Alexander Kilham, founder of the Methodist New Connexion, who died at Nottingham eight months later (20 December 1798).

Hannah Kilham opened a day-school in Nottingham, spending her vacations at Epworth, her husband's early home.

[2] Kilham induced the Society of Friends to set up an unofficial African Instruction Fund Committee, in existence 1819 to 1825, with female representation.

[6] Kilham then went to Ireland, and spent some months with the British and Irish Ladies' Society for famine relief.

[2] Noted documentation of Hannah Kilham and other individuals that made attempts to the spread of Christianity in the western sections of Africa can be further researched in the book, West African Christianity – the religious Impact, by author Lamin Sanneh, pg.66 On 11 November 1827 Kilham once more sailed for Sierra Leone, taking with her a number of African School Tracts (London, 1827), which she had published.

Having obtained permission from the governor to take charge of recaptive children rescued from slave-ships, Kilham, with the aid of a matron, founded a large school at Charlotte, a mountain village near Bathurst, and spent the rainy season there.

She then travelled to Liberia, visited schools in Monrovia, and made arrangements for sending some African children to England for education.