"Respectably born and educated", John Hope Smith, aged fourteen, was placed by his father as a writer at Cape Coast Castle.
During his reign at Cape Coast Castle, the biggest fort in Fante territory, the African Company of Merchants dispatched two missions to Asante.
[2] In August 1817 Smith found an Ashanti man guilty of striking a sentry who had required him to remove a cloth from his shoulder.
A cold caught in Paris led to his early death aged forty-four.
[1] John Hope Smith was married to an African woman from the Fante tribe.