How Samuel Ajayi Crowther reunited with his mother and sisters after Slavery
In 1821, Slave raiders attacked the town of Oshogun in Yorubaland (modern-day Nigeria). During the violent raid, a boy named Ajayi, who was roughly 12 years old, witnessed his father get killed while trying to defend the family. Ajayi, his mother (Afala/Ibisomi), and his two sisters were captured. The raiders tied ropes around their necks and marched them away, marking the end of their family life.
At the market town of Iseyin, Ajayi was abruptly traded for a horse. This tore him away from his mother and sisters, causing him such deep psychological despair that he contemplated taking his own life.
He was sold and transferred multiple times to different masters. He suffered from severe starvation, survived on meager food rations, and battled illness due to neglect and harsh conditions.
Eventually, Ajayi was sold to Portuguese slave traders and locked in a slave market at Lagos. He was chained together with other captives and loaded onto a Portuguese slave ship named the Esperanza Felix. The dark, cramped, and suffocating conditions of the ship's hold subjected him to extreme physical misery and the terrifying threat of the Atlantic slave trade.
Just hours after the slave ship set sail, the British Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron intercepted it. The British crew liberated the captives and brought them to Freetown, Sierra Leone, a settlement for freed slaves. Under the care of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), Ajayi was educated, converted to Christianity, and took the name Samuel Ajayi Crowther. He excelled in his studies, went to England, and eventually became the first African Anglican bishop.
After the initial separation, they briefly regained freedom but were captured again by other raiders. His aging mother was sold through various slave markets and spent years in bondage.
One of Ajayi’s sisters managed to save four pounds and ten shillings. She used this hard-earned money to buy her mother's freedom. Once free, they settled in a small village near the city of Abeokuta.
In 1845, 25 years after their separation, Crowther returned to Nigeria to establish a new Christian mission in Abeokuta. Within three weeks of his arrival, locals informed him that his mother and sisters were alive and living nearby.
His mother and brother traveled to the mission station to find him. In his personal journals, Crowther described the deeply emotional meeting. His mother trembled in disbelief, and they held hands, weeping in silence for a long time. She called him by the childhood pet names given to him by his late grandmother.
Crowther immediately took custody of his elderly mother and reunited with his sisters. On February 5, 1848, Samuel Ajayi Crowther baptized his own mother, giving her the Christian name Hannah. She lived out the rest of her days under his care in Abeokuta, passing away well past the age of 90.
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