Thomas Birch Freeman (6 December 1809 in Twyford, Hampshire – 12 August 1890 in Accra) was an Anglo-African Wesleyan minister, missionary, botanist and colonial official in West Africa.

[3] Decades later, when he relocated to the Gold Coast, he exchanged correspondence with Sir William Hooker, the first Director of Kew Gardens near London, the world's leading botanical institution, on West African flora.

He had earlier fallen out with the colonial Governor over theological differences and was eventually prosecuted, jailed and deported from Cape Coast to Dixcove, while other native Christians were threatened with a fine.

[3][9] A request for missionaries was made by one John Aggrey, a Fante royal, who was initially publicly flogged and denied the Cape Coast paramount chieftaincy due to his Christian faith.

Over nearly two decades, from 1838 and 1857, together, with his student, William de Graft, his mission activities took him to the Gold Coast, the Asante hinterlands, Yorubaland (Badagry, Lagos and Abeokuta) and to Dahomey.

[14] Sampson Oppong, an indigenous evangelist and prophet, though sheer missionary zeal, collaborated with the Methodist Church in Kumasi to propagate the Gospel in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions.

[1][2][3][4] Freeman sent a report to the Methodist Mission in England, recommending the establishment of boarding schools to train preachers, teachers and catechists, outside the influence of the traditional animist society.

[1][2][3][4] He quickly recovered and went to another town, Yankumasi, where a receptive young chieftain by the name of Asin Chibu gave him sheep and green plantains and instructed five porters to carry his luggage.

Traversing the River Prah, with its wooded banks full of palm trees, ferns and other flora, Freeman passed over the Adansi hills and onward to the small town of Kwisa/Kusa.

[32] One scholar of mission history stated: "Members at Cape Coast had grown up in…undetached houses with specially designed exits to facilitate escape from one through the other in time of attack by their northern enemy.

"[9] He eventually entered Kumasi on 1 April 1839 and on the durbar grounds with several chiefs assembled, Freeman presented to the Asantehene a petition to open a church and school, after making it clear that he neither had political or commercial interests in Asante.

[33] He sent the journal of his visits to the home board in London with a recommendation of George Maclean, the de facto governor who served as the president of the Council of European Merchants at Cape Coast.

De Graft preached at Langton Street Chapel, the home church of the then deceased Captain Potter of the Bristol merchant barque, Congo, who had first narrated the activities of the Cape Coast Bible Band, also known as the "Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge" to his fellow congregants.

Freeman's second coming to Asante received a warm welcome, as he was in the company of two scions of the royal family, John Owusu-Ansa and William Owusu Kwantabisa, political hostages from one of the Anglo-Asante wars and the ensuring 1831 Treaty.

The German Basel missionaries, Fritz and Rosa Ramseyer and Johannes Kuhne, together with French trader Marie-Joseph Bonnat, were detained in this mission building during their captivity in Asante from 1969 to 1874.

[34][35][33] During Freeman's ministry, several chiefs and fetish priests in multiple towns, including Mankessim, Aberadzi, Akrodu and Anomabu embraced Christianity and several native traditionalists were baptised.

[1][2][3][4] Some Yorubas or the Aku who had become Christians in Sierra Leone returned to Yorubaland in the Bight of Benin, in modern-day Lagos, Nigeria, and made a request to the Wesleyan Missionary Society for a missionary/teacher.

Freeman was thus the first Christian missionary to proselytise in Badagry in modern-day Lagos State, when his ship, Queen Victoria arrived there, on 24 September 1842 in the company of his former pupil, William de Graft and his wife, to investigate issues raised by the Yoruba returnees from Sierra Leone.

Shortly after his arrival, Freeman had an amiable conversation with the infamous Brazilian slave trader, Don Antonio de Souza (died c. 1849), an ally of King Gezo.

There, he was astounded by the chieftain's autocracy, the prevalence of human sacrifice (beheading, preservation by salting and drying, hanging of the corpse upside down), the war fervor of the all-woman warrior regiment, the Amazons who belonged to the Dahomeyan kings.

Additionally, he met Henry Wharton, a West Indian mulatto from Grenada who followed Freeman to the Gold Coast and lived and worked there for twenty-eight years.

[1][2][3][4][9] In 1857, in spite of his financial incompetence, Freeman accepted a government position of administrative and civil commandant of the Accra district from Sir Benjamin Chilley Campbell, who served as the governor of the Gold Coast from 1857 to 1858.

The colonial government put him in charge of implementing and enforcing the highly unpopular poll tax, believing the administration would use the funds for social amenities for the people of the Gold Coast.

In 1859, Freeman and another Wesleyan missionary, Henry Wharton of the West Indies founded a news publication, the Christian Messenger and Examiner, as a medium to translate foreign literature and classical works into native African languages.

[39][40] Shortly after his ordination, Freeman married Elizabeth Booth, the housekeeper of Sir Robert and Lady Harland, and sailed with her to Cape Coast on 5 November 1837, arriving on 3 January 1838.

[1][2][3][4][9] Upon Freeman's return from Dahomey and Abeokuta in 1854, he married an educated Gold Coast local woman, Rebecca Morgan, an early Fante convert, with whom he had four children.

With the permission of the Wesleyan Mission Society Freeman aided Wolseley with his wealth of geographic knowledge about the River Prah and the paths between Kumasi and Cape Coast.

[3] Freeman declined an offer from his fellow missionaries to pay for a trip to England citing the cold weather and old age, as he was no longer acclimatised to the temperate regions of the British Isles.

[1][2][3][4][9] Freeman's body was laid-in-state at the mission house the following day, on 13 August, before his funeral service was held at the Wesleyan Church in Accra, attended by a large crowd.

[43][44][45] To summarise his legacy and the timeline of his achievements in the Wesleyan movement in West Africa:[46] Thomas Birch Freeman dedicated the first chapel at Cape Coast on Sunday 10 June 1838.