Joseph Jackson Fuller

The Rev. Joseph Jackson Fuller (1825–1908), Baptist missionary to the pre-colonial African Chiefdoms of the Cameroons, was one of the earliest slaves to be freed in Jamaica (initially under the partial freedoms of the "apprenticeship act") who went on to become well-educated and travel internationally. He headed mission stations, teaching, preaching, brick-making, and translating books such as John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress into Duala. Retiring to England, Fuller ended his days as a public speaker for Baptist and missionary audiences, sometimes before thousands of people.

Joseph Jackson Fuller was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica on 29 June 1825, son of Alexander McCloud Fuller, a slave. When he was eight years old, the "apprenticeship act", giving immediate freedom to those six years of age and below, and an intermediate status for those of his age and older, was enacted. At this time a Baptist mission house offered Joseph's mother reduced fees of 3d a week to enrol Joseph and his brother Samuel as pupils, helped by his grandmother who ran a small grocer's shop. The schoolmaster, Mr Kirby, found Joseph learnt quickly, and brought him to the attention of the Baptist minister at Spanish Town, Mr Phillipo.

When in 1838, eight hundred thousand slaves in the West Indies were made free, the event became an abiding memory for Joseph Fuller. In speeches many years later in England he told of how the people went to the various chapels to share in the watchnight services. He went to the baptist chapel at Spanish Town where his father was an active member, and found it overflowing with people in their thousands outside. A grave was dug and a coffin prepared, containing slave's handcuffs, chains and shackles. The people stayed all night, and at 6 o'clock in the morning a horn blew to summon the start of the working day, whereupon they lowered the coffin: they "buried old slavery".

Beginning in 1839, Jamaican Baptists and English missionary Baptists to Jamaica (such as James Phillippo, Thomas Burchell, Samuel Oughton and William Knibb) proposed the establishment of a mission to West Africa. The English Baptist and abolitionist William Knibb, and two Jamaican Baptists, Henry Beckford and Edward Barrett took the matter up directly during their visit to Britain in 1840 to attend the world's first international anti-slavery convention. As the mission scheme began, Joseph and his parents were given the opportunity to join the Baptist Missionary Society project as pioneers, to evangelise, bring education and welfare to, and encourage an end to slavery among some of the traditional chiefdoms and kingdoms of West Africa.

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