Written by Dr Joseph Yannielli.
The Reverend Augustus William Hanson (1815 – 1862) was an Underground Railroad conductor, abolitionist, linguist, civil servant and scholar. Born in Accra in West Africa to an Asante mother and an African-British father, educated in England and America, he became one of the first European diplomats of African descent. An ordained minister in the Church of England, he had a complicated relationship with the Bishop of London. Hanson spent his career battling slavery, racism and colonialism and pursued an international vision of pan-African unity. Yet he is almost completely forgotten today. Why?
One reason is a distorted and dismembered archival record scattered across three continents. Unlike famous white abolitionists, such as Thomas Fowell Buxton or William Lloyd Garrison, Hanson did not leave behind a coherent collection of papers or a network of descendants to protect and promote his legacy. He appears among the manuscripts of Buxton and Garrison (both of whom supported his career) and in the libraries and archives of the organisations that employed him, including the British Foreign Office and the Church Missionary Society. He also appears in contemporary newspaper articles and academic journals. He was prominent enough during his lifetime that an imposter stole his identity. Despite years of searching, however, I have not been able to find even a single photograph.
I first encountered Hanson during my PhD research on the Mendi Mission, an abolitionist outpost established in Africa as an extension of the Amistad rebellion. Hanson served as a translator during the Amistad trials. He also played a key role in the genesis of the mission, which helped inspire his pan-African anti-slavery activism. In 2015, I discovered a hidden cache of manuscripts that documented daily life at the mission during the 1850s, including an extraordinary collection of correspondence with Hanson, then serving as British Consul in the Sherbro region of West Africa. In the years since, whenever I could steal a spare moment, I have gone in search of Hanson and his family. The detective trail has led me from Connecticut to Texas, Indiana and Pennsylvania, and from Ghana to Liberia, Sierra Leone, England and France. A research fellowship at the British Library’s Eccles Institute helped me to assemble more pieces of the puzzle, but there is still a lot missing.
The invitation to speak at Fulham Palace provided an opportunity to dig deeper into Hanson’s ecclesiastical career. Hanson received theological training at Washington College (now Trinity College) in Hartford, Connecticut, and was ordained a deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church in July 1842. The testimonials gathered for the occasion noted that he ‘lived piously, soberly and honestly.’ In December of that year, he arrived in England with a letter of introduction to Charles James Blomfield, the Bishop of London from 1828 to 1856. Three months later, on 12 March 1843, Hanson was ordained a priest ‘for the colonies’ in the chapel at Lambeth Palace. The Archbishop of Canterbury performed the ceremony with a letter dimissory (a type of recommendation) from Bishop Blomfield. That summer, Hanson published a translation of the Gospels of Matthew and John in the Ga language. By the end of the year, he departed for Cape Coast Castle, a former slave trading fort in what is now Ghana. Appointed government chaplain, he followed in the footsteps of Philip Quaque, the first indigenous African ordained in the Church of England.
As Bishop of London, Blomfield’s job included responsibility for Anglican clergy overseas, and he met and corresponded with Hanson periodically. After his return from Cape Coast in 1847, Hanson repeatedly asked for employment in England. Blomfield was sympathetic, sometimes offering a few pounds for expenses, but always denied his requests. Hanson did preach on occasion, however. An eyewitness account of his sermon at a Bible Society meeting in Bishopsgate contains a mix of exotic thrill and racist condescension: ‘He is a curious man, so elegant in look, manner and discourse – quotations so good – His black face with the strong gas light upon it, and his black hands held up, making his beautifully tied white neckcloth look the whiter – were striking, when one thought that it was truly a bit of Africa.’ This response was probably typical among white British audiences. Other accounts of his sermons reported disappointment that he did not speak in broken English.
A note published after his death described Hanson as ‘formerly domestic chaplain to the late Duke of Manchester.’ This was a patronage position, probably secured by Lady Olivia Sparrow, whose daughter was married to George Montagu, the 6th Duke of Manchester. But a rift between Lady Olivia and the Duke after 1847 likely meant the position did not last long. An entry in the 1861 London Census lists Hanson’s occupation as ‘Clerk without cure of souls.’ By then, of course, he had become well-known within philanthropic, political, and scientific circles. Contributors to a fund to support his family after his death included MPs, civil servants, doctors and aristocrats. Five ministers made donations, including Edward Cragg Haynes, the so-called ‘Black vicar’ of Yorkshire. Bishop Blomfield had passed away several years earlier in 1857, but other senior members of the clergy were conspicuously absent.
I look forward to discussing Hanson’s life and accomplishments at Fulham Palace on 27 Feb 2025. In the meantime, the detective work continues. If you have any artefacts or clues related to this remarkable individual, please get in touch!
About the author
Joseph Yannielli received his PhD from Yale University and is currently Lecturer in Modern History at Aston University in Birmingham, UK. Before this, he was a postdoctoral associate at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and a Perkins Fellow at Princeton University. He is completing a book about the transatlantic Mendi Mission established by abolitionists in the wake of the Amistad rebellion. He is also interested in digital history and has co-created several public projects involving students, academics and community partners.