Alexander Worthy Clerk
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The Reverend Alexander Worthy Clerk |
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Portrait of Alexander Worthy Clerk
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| Born | 1820 Fairfield Plantage, Manchester Parish, Jamaica |
| Died | 1906 (aged 86) Aburi, Gold Coast |
| Nationality | |
| Education | Fairfield Teachers' Seminary, Fairfield, Manchester Parish, Jamaica |
| Occupation | |
| Spouse(s) | Pauline Hesse (m. 1848) |
| Children | Nicholas Timothy Clerk (son) |
| Relatives | Clerk family |
| Church | |
| Ordained | Fairfield Moravian Church, 1842 |
Alexander Worthy Clerk (1820 - †1906) was a Jamaican Moravian missionary, teacher and clergyman who arrived in 1843 in the Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg (now Osu) in Accra, Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast. He was part of the first group of 24 West Indian missionaries who worked under the auspices of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society of Switzerland. He is widely acknowledged and regarded as one of the pioneers of the precursor to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. A leader in education in colonial Ghana, he established a boarding middle school, The Salem School at Osu in 1843. He was the father of Nicholas Timothy Clerk (1862 -1961), a Basel-trained theologian, who was elected the first Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast and co-founded the all boys’ boarding high school, Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School established in 1938.
Clerk was born in 1820 on Fairfield Plantage near Spur Tree, Manchester Parish, Jamaica under British colonial rule. Little is known of Clerk's parentage and childhood other than his parents were Christian Jamaicans. He studied Christian theology and ministry, ethics, pedagogy and education at the now defunct Fairfield Teachers’ Seminary (Lehrerseminar Fairfield), a teacher’s training college and theological seminary, founded by the Reverend Jacob Zorn, a German superintendent of the Moravian Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands and a missionary of the London-based Missions of the Church of the United Brethren and its sister organization, The Brethren’s Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel. The training institute was established by Zorn to prepare young Jamaican men for Christian evangelism, catechism and the propagation of the gospel in the West Indies after the abolishment of slavery in the British Empire in 1834 Clerk’s education was funded by two wealthy Victorian Christian women from London, Miss Ibbett and Mrs. P. Skeate. Clerk was set to become a missionary affiliated to the Fairfield Moravian Church mission presbytery, (founded on 1 January 1826) after his graduation from the seminary in 1842.
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