John Leighton Wilson

Background

John L. Wilson was born on March 25, 1809, in Sumter County, South Carolina, the son of William Wilson and Jane E. James, descendants of the Scotch-Irish settlers of Williamsburg County, South Carolina.

Education

Beginning his education in a local log schoolhouse, he continued it at Springville, and in Zion Academy, Winnsboro, South Carolina, and in 1827 entered the junior class of Union College, Schenectady, New York, graduating in 1829.

Career

A winter with his uncle, the Rev. Robert W. James, a founder of Columbia (South Carolina) Seminary, stimulated his interest in Africa, to which he felt that slave-holding America owed a debt of atonement.

His religious life began in a series of meetings at Mount Pleasant, where he taught during the latter half of 1830, and in January 1831 he entered Columbia Seminary and was a member of the first class to be graduated at that institution. After studying Arabic at Andover, he was ordained, in September 1833, by the Presbytery of Harmony, South Carolina, and soon after, accompanied by a classmate, he sailed for western Africa on an exploring tour of five months.

Upon his return he freed thirty slaves, took them at their personal expense to Liberia. He did not favor universal or immediate emancipation, and the fact that he retained possession of two negro children who had come to him through entail and refused to leave him, brought such violent assault from abolitionists as to curtail support for his mission at Cape Palmas. After seven years there, he removed the mission to the Gabun. It was in his house that Thomas S. Savage, seeing the skull of a gorilla, was prompted to make the investigations that resulted in the publication of his "Notice of the External Characters and Habits of Troglodytes Gorilla, a New Species of Orang from the Gaboon River".

Wilson in his West Africa (post) records the earliest investigation of this animal in its natural habitat. Hating the slave trade, next to the rum trade, as the bane of Africa, he published a pamphlet, which was widely distributed in England by Lord Palmerston, showing the efficiency of the British fleet in the suppression of that traffic.

Returning to America in 1852, he was elected a secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions at the General Assembly of 1853. For the next nine years he lived in New York, where he edited the Home and Foreign Record and published his encyclopedic work, Western Africa, Its History, Conditions, and Prospects (1856).

Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, although he had avoided all part in politics, he resigned his position, and on the day before travel closed returned to the South. He carried on evangelistic work in the Confederate army and served for a time as chaplain. When in December 1861 the Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America (later the Presbyterian Church in the United States) was organized, Wilson was placed in charge of its foreign missions and from 1863 to 1872 he also had charge of its home missionary projects.

During Reconstruction he did much to sustain the life of the Southern churches. He wrote for the Southern Presbyterian Review and in 1866 founded The Missionary, which he edited for nearly twenty years.

With the proceeds from the sale of his wife's lands in Georgia, the Wilsons maintained a girls' school in the old homestead at Salem. Here were educated girls from four Southern states who paid tuition only if they were able. He also had a night school for negroes.

John Leighton Wilson died on July 13, 1886, in the plantation home where he had been born.

Achievements

• John Leighton Wilson was the first missionary to West Africa by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, who during nearly twenty years contributed to the Missionary Herald, treated the sick, founded schools and churches, and compiled grammars and dictionaries of Grebo and Mpongwee, into which languages he translated certain of the Gospels and tracts.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Western Africa: Its History, Condition, and Prospects

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Heads of Mpongwe Grammar: Containing Most of the Principles Needed by a Learner

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • A grammar of the Mpongwe language: With vocabularies

    (This book, "A grammar of the Mpongwe language with vocabu...)

  • Languages of Africa: Comparison between the Mandingo, Grebo and Mpongwe dialects

Views

John Wilson believed the South had wronged Africa by kidnapping and enslaving so many of its people. Bringing the Gospel to Africa was his gesture toward repaying that enormous debt. He also felt called to this mission.

Personality

John Leighton Wilson was more than six feet in height, erect and strong, wise and kind.

Connections

On May 21, 1834, John Leighton Wilson married Jane Elizabeth Bayard. They do not have children.

Father:

William Wilson

In 1801, William Wilson married Jane E. Wilson James, by whom he had several children. After the death of his first wife, in 1818 he married Sarah Bradley. The couple had two children.

Mother:

Jane E. Wilson (James)

Sister:

Martha Elmira Mills (Wilson)

Sister:

Mary Margaret Wilson (Wilson)

Sister:

Sarah Susannah Wilson

Sister:

Elizabeth Jane Wilson

Half-brother:

Robert Bradley Wilson

Wife:

Jane Elizabeth Wilson (Bayard)

Brother:

Samuel Ervin Wilson

Brother:

William Thomas Wilson

Brother:

John James Wilson

Uncle:

Robert W. James

References

• Memoirs of Rev. John Leighton Wilson, D.D.: Missionary to Africa, and Secretary of Foreign Missions
• Wilson's Tales of the Borders, and of Scotland. Revised by A. Leighton. New ed