Barnabas Shaw Article

000301Shaw, Barnabas * 12.04.1788 at Elloughton, England+ 21.06.1857 at Mowbray, South Africa---Barnabas Shaw was born on 12.04.1788 at Elloughton, Yorkshire in England. He was a Wesleyan Methodist Missionary, founder of Methodism and of its first mission stations in southern Africa. He was the son of a small farmer, Thomas Shaw, and his wife, Elizabeth Best. Shaw joined the Methodist Society and began to preach in 1808. After the customary probationary period he was ordained a minister in 1814. Offering his services for the foreign mission field, he was directed to work in Cape Town. Before setting out for South Africa in December 1815, he took lessons in Dutch in London. Shaw and his wife arrived at the Cape on 13.04.1816. He was refused permission to preach in Cape Town by the then Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, and when he met Johann Heinrich Schmelen of the London Missionary Society in early 1816, he decided to travel with him to identify a suitable site for mission work, which he founded at Lilyfontein near the Kamiesberg in the northern Cape Colony as the first Wesleyan mission station. Notable early baptised Christians were Jacob Links (+ August 1825) and Johannes Jager. Links had become a probationary minister and, in 1822, an ordained minister of the church. During his stay at Lilyfontein, he both made and initiated several trips into Bushmanland with a view to establish stations there. In July 1819 the Rev. J. Archbell joined the mission staff as Shaw's assistant. Accompanied by the Rev. J.J. Kicherer, Shaw visited in 1820 the London Missionary Schmelen at Bethany in Great Namaqualand. Together they explored the Fish River area in search for a site for another mission station. The Kaikhaun (Red Nation) Chief Tsawúb Gamab (1814-1824) welcomed the idea. In furtherance of the idea Shaw, sent Archbell and Links to consult Tsawúb Gamab and establish a mission station. Bosfontein (to-day Grootfontein South) was identified as a site, but for many years not realised. In 1825 he agreed to allow Links, Jager and the Rev. William Threlfall, missionary in Lily Fountain, to again explore the possibility of opening a mission station in the Fish River area. Not long after they had left (probably August 1825) they were all murdered by the San Naughaap north-west of Warmbad, for the sake of their possessions. Following the killing of Threlfall and his party, Europeans avoided to travel to Great Namaqualand until the mid-1830s. In 1826 Shaw left Lilyfontein permanently and settled at Cape Town in order to start a Methodist missionary service there until 1837. A donation in 1832 by Josiah Nisbett of the Madras Civil Service, made the establishment of a mission station at Warmbad in Great Namaqualand possible, permanently to head the Methodist mission at the town. Shaw recommended to the missionary committee in England that the Rev. Edward Boyer Cook, his assistant, be sent to found the station. The Wesleyan Missionary Society took over all missionary activities from the London Missionary Society (until 1840). Consequently on 16.07.1834 Cook (until 09.03.1843) revived the missionary work in Warmbad which was dormant since 1811, the days of the London Missionary Society and after the Warmbad mission station was destroyed by the Orlam Afrikaners under Jager and Titus Afrikaner. Cook called Warmbad "Nisbett Bath" in honour of Josiah Nisbett. He worked there with Peter Links (until 1839). The Wesleyan Missionary Society called the missionary work in Great Namaqualand which later expanded to the north (Naosanabis (Leonardville)(1843), Windhoek (1844) and Gobabis (1845)) the "Damara Mission". In 1838 5Hawoben (Veldskoendragers) began to settle at 5Khauxa!nas. The Wesleyan missionaries Joseph Tindall, Benjamin Ridsdale and John A. Bailie worked among the 5Hawoben. In 1839 Wesleyan missionary Joseph Tindall (until April 1842) worked with missionary Cook at Warmbad. Tindall was followed by Benjamin Ridsdale (01.02.1844-1847) who meticulously described 5Khauxa!nas (or Schans Vlakte which was re-discovered by Klaus Dierks in 1986). He was followed by missionaries Macleod (from 01.02.1844), John A. Bailie (1848-1850), Richard Ridgill (1855-1858), John Thomas (1857-1859), J. Priestley (1859-1864) and Timotheus Sneeue (1863-1864), as well as M. Godman (1864-1866), the last of the Wesleyan missionaries. Due to financial constraints the Wesleyan Missionary Society transferred the business of the Damara Mission to the Rhenish Missionary Society in 1866. With the exception of a six year stay in England from 1837 until 1843, Shaw remained at the Cape until he died on 21.06.1857 at Mowbray. He was married to Jane Butler in 1814. They had one son, Rev. Barnabas J. Shaw.---Gender: mField of activity: RELProfession: MissionaryMarried to: Jane Shaw, née Butler, married 1814 RAW DATA: DSAB I:709-711; Chronology of Namibian History, 2003 (Dierks);

My Direct Lineage

Alan Locke Shaw (Above Picture)

My late father 1928 - 2005. Alan grew up on a farm outside Gwelo in Southern Rhodesia. He was schooled at Chaplin where he was a school prefect. On leaving school dad joined the Gwelo Times as a trainee printing technician. In 1951 Alan volunteered for service with the Southern Rhodesia Far East Volunteer Unit of The Southern Rhodesia Defence Force. He served with C Squadron Special Air Service (Malayan Scouts) under Peter Walls. In 1952 Alan was invalided from the army due to a lung infection. When he retuned to Rhodesia he joined the railways as a trainee Station Foreman. While he was at Balla Balla in 1952 he began a pen friend correspondence with Eileen Jooste in Middleberg, Transvaal. This lead to their marriage on 11th July, 1953. On returning to Rhodesia Alan was stationed at Dett near Wankie. His eldest son, Owen was born in May 1954 while Alan was at Dett.

Alan joined the Department of veterinary Services in 1955 and was stationed at Chipinga. His second son, Gordon Bevis was born that year. Alan was then transferred to Enkledoors and the twins Glenn and Colin were born. Youngest son, Grant, was born in 1963. Alan was also stationed at Gwelo and Fort Victoria. His happiest days were when stationed in Victoria Province.

During the Rhodesian Bush War Alan was exposed to danger in the field. As a consequence of his bravery and dedication to duty he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal in 1979.

Alan retired when stationed at Bulawayo in 1983 where he was Chief Provincial Animal Health Inspector for Matabeleland Province.

He spent ten years on a farm near Heidelburg South Africa before retiring to Kariba in 1993. Ill health forced him to leave Kariba in 1996 and he returned to Bulawayo. In 2004 due to ill health he moved to an old age home in Benoni, South Africa. Alan passed away on 20 August, 2005.

One of the twins, Colin died in a boating accident in 2002. Alan never recovered from this loss.

Eileen sadly passed away less than a year after Alan.

Both Alan and Eileen were victims of Robert Mugabe's hatred towards white people.

Gordon Locke Shaw

Gordon Locke Shaw was born near Bushmans River in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. He moved to Rhodesia with Ambrose Shaw's whole family in the 1920's. Gordon farmed at Bijou and then Staines farm near Gwelo. Gordon had one daughter and four sons. Gordon passed away in October 1968.

Ambrose George Shaw

Barnabas Shaw Tree

Descendants of Rev Barnabas SHAW
Page 1
28 Oct 2003
1. Rev Barnabas SHAW (b.12 Apr 1788-Elloughton,nr Hull,Y,England;d.21 Jun 1857-MS,M,WC,South Africa)
sp: Jane BUTLER (b.1793/1794-Bidlington Quay,Yorkshire,England;m.24 Jul 1815;d.21 Mar 1861-Mowbray,CT,W,South Africa)
2. Infant SHAW (b.23 Mar 1816-High seas;d.1816-High seas)
2. Infant SHAW (b.1816-Lily Fountain,Namaqualand,South Africa;d.1816-Lily Fountain,Namaqualand,South Africa)
2. Infant SHAW (b.2 Jun 1818-Lily Fountain,Namaqualand,South Africa;d.6 Jun 1818-Lily Fountain,Namaqualand,South Africa)
2. Barnabas (John) James SHAW Jnr (b.1 Feb 1820-South Africa;d.Jun 1907)
sp: Barbara WAKINSHAW (b.Abt 1820-Newcastle-on-Tyne,England;m.27 Jul 1843;d.17 Nov 1914)
3. Barnabas John SHAW (b.23 Apr 1844-Wynberg,Cape Town,South Africa;d.8 Dec 1898-Bathurst,EC,South Africa)
sp: Mary Ann DOLD (b.23 Oct 1850;m.21 Oct;d.3 Jun 1948)
4. Barnabas James Dold SHAW (d.1942)
4. Barbara Wakinshaw SHAW (b.Abt 1881;d.30 Oct 1966)
4. Gertrude SHAW (b.Abt 1886;d.29 Aug 1859)
4. Son SHAW
4. Daughter SHAW
3. Susannah Jane SHAW (b.27 Oct 1845)
sp: Frederick Mouncey GILFILLAN (b.13 Jun 1824-,Eastern Cape. South;m.18 Dec 1867;d.5 Jun 1885-P,,South Africa)
4. Ernest GILFILLAN (b.1861;d.30 Jul 1953)
sp: Minnie SMITH (b.17 Nov 1884;d.27 May 1968)
5. Verona GILFILLAN
sp: Gilbert Horace WILMOT
6. Lysle WILMOT
sp: HEATHCOTE
6. Jenny-Lynn WILMOT
5. Sydney Smith GILFILLAN
sp: Beryl HEATHCOTE
5. Florence Pearl GILFILLAN (b.1908)
sp: Walter Henry WEBSTER
6. Yolande Elaine WEBSTER
sp: Thomas Trevor HOOLE
7. Margaret Lynne HOOLE
7. Patricia Mary HOOLE
sp: Julian Oscar Hillston SOUTHEY
8. Jacqueline Patricia SOUTHEY
8. Robert Oscar SOUTHEY
8. Stuart Julian SOUTHEY
7. Trevor Tamplin HOOLE
6. Kevin Michael WEBSTER
6. Desmond Keith WEBSTER
5. Beryl Eda GILFILLAN
sp: Edward George Bramwell SHAW
6. Rosemary Coral SHAW
sp: Peter Henry LIBBY
6. Wendy Edineen SHAW
sp: Pieter Olivier HUGO
6. George Bramwell SHAW
sp: Peta SWEET
5. Minnie Miriam GILFILLAN (b.7 Jul 1918;d.2 Jun 1919)
4. Alfred Edwin GILFILLAN
sp: Muriel Constance Starr BEAUCHAMP
5. Alfred Edwin Shaw GILFILLAN
sp: Elizabeth Marion SPROT
5. Barbara Mary GILFILLAN
sp: Alan Power DE KOCH
5. Cynthia Beauchamp GILFILLAN
5. Muriel Mouncey GILFILLAN
sp: Thomas Burnham KING
sp: Alex Frederick STUAT
4. Florrie GILFILLAN
4. Fred GILFILLAN



Descendants of Rev Barnabas SHAW
Page 2
28 Oct 2003
3. James Wakinshaw SHAW (b.11 Jun 1847;d.18 Jan 1946)
sp: Lucy ELLIOTT
4. James Wakinshaw SHAW (b.15 Jan 1886;d.14 Jul 1944)
sp: Alice Marie Poulton TIMM (b.22 Dec 1883;m.27 Mar 1912;d.5 Aug 1968-Peddie,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
5. Marjorie Alice SHAW (b.12 Oct 1912-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa;d.1993-Port Alfred,EC,South Africa)
sp: Alex Percy LLOYD (b.10 Jul 1906;d.12 Sep 1971-East London,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
6. Bruce Alex LLOYD
6. Ian Alex LLOYD
sp: Elaine BRENT
4. Etta Emmaline SHAW (d.18 Jul 1974)
sp: Owen Percival PIKE
5. Aubrey Jonathan PIKE
5. Gladys PIKE
5. Harold Shaw PIKE
sp: UNKNOWN
6. Terence PIKE
5. Hope Gwendoline PIKE
5. Eileen Joyce PIKE
5. AG PIKE
sp: UNKNOWN
6. Basil PIKE
5. HH PIKE
4. Willie SHAW
4. Florence SHAW (b.Abt 1900;d.30 Jun 1968)
sp: Harold James BRADFIELD (b.Abt 1896;d.15 Aug 1966)
5. Allan Clyde BRADFIELD (b.26 May 1929;d.26 Jun 1929)
3. George Henry Bramwell SHAW (b.19 Jan 1851-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
sp: Engela Anne COPEMAN (d.13 Mar 1890)
sp: Sarah Roberta HOOLE (b.5 Dec 1870-Grahamstown,Eastern Cape,South Africa;m.9 May 1895)
4. Arnold Bramwell SHAW (b.1895;d.Abt 1975-Canada)
sp: Helen TREDGOLD (m.6 Apr 1920)
5. John Arnold SHAW
sp: Patricia Mary FISHER
6. Allan John SHAW
4. Ada SHAW (b.1897-Cape Town,South Africa;d.1979-Cape Town,South Africa)
sp: Rev CAWOOD (m.1917)
sp: Ren WILLIAMS
sp: Rev Samuel Barrett CAWOOD (b.5 Sep 1849-Cradock,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
4. Bessie Bramwell SHAW
4. Hettie Emmaline Bramwell SHAW (b.24 Jan 1907-Colesberg,EC,South Africa;d.28 Nov 1919-AH,G,EC,South Africa)
4. Edward George Bramwell SHAW
sp: Louise GREY (b.24 May 1908-Johannesburg,Gauteng,South Africa;d.21 Aug 1980-J,Gauteng,South Africa)
5. Lenore Cecily SHAW
sp: Beryl Eda GILFILLAN
5. Rosemary Coral SHAW ** Printed on Page 1 **
5. Wendy Edineen SHAW ** Printed on Page 1 **
5. George Bramwell SHAW ** Printed on Page 1 **
sp: Olive MCCULLOUGH (d.25 Dec 1985-Kenton on Sea,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
sp: Elizabeth Madeleine SCHOEMAN
sp: Maisie WRIGHT (d.21 Dec 1990-Kenton on Sea,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
3. John Reay SHAW (b.9 Mar 1853-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa;d.1931-Stutterheim,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
sp: Charlotte Louise VAN RYNEVELD (b.1855-Graaff Reinet,Eastern Cape,South Africa;d.1936-S,EC,South Africa)
3. Barbara SHAW (b.28 Nov 1854-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa;d.21 Mar 1923)
3. Samuel Charles SHAW (b.7 Sep 1857-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa;d.17 Jan 1930-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
sp: Mildred Amelia ELLIOTT (b.Abt 1863;d.7 Jan 1937-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
3. Ambrose George Campbell SHAW (b.17 Jul 1860-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa;d.Abt 1952)
sp: Emmie
sp: Mary Ellen LOCKE (b.2 Feb 1866-Maitland,Cape,South Africa;m.6 Apr 1889)
4. Gordon Locke SHAW (b.28 Jan 1888-Gwelo,Zimbabwe)



Descendants of Rev Barnabas SHAW
Page 3
28 Oct 2003
sp: Gwen FERGUSON
4. Engela Starr SHAW (b.4 Nov 1889)
sp: JUBBA
sp: Cyril HEATHCOTE
sp: MEEK
4. Emily Locke SHAW (b.3 Aug 1891-Glen Shaw,Alexandria,EC,South Africa;d.29 Oct 1956-The Post,A,EC,South Africa)
sp: Albert Cameron CHOWLES (b.21 Jan 1891-Alexandria,EC,South Africa;m.23 Mar 1918;d.11 Nov 1972-)
4. George Henry Locke SHAW (b.14 Jun 1893)
sp: Violet SMITH
4. Ambrose Drew SHAW (b.25 Mar 1895;d.3 Dec 1967)
4. Edwin Locke SHAW (b.10 Mar 1897;d.5 Jul 1972)
sp: Stella CILLIERS
4. Florence Mary Helen SHAW (b.7 Mar 1899)
sp: Sandy RANKIN
4. Gwendoline Louise SHAW (b.12 May 1902)
sp: Errol ROBERTS
4. Jean Thompson SHAW (b.24 Sep 1904-Glen Shaw,Alexandria,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
sp: Basil DICKS
4. Thora Winifred SHAW
sp: Murray BENNETT
2. Charlotte Elizabeth SHAW (b.26 Jan 1823)
sp: WL BLORE
2. Jane Butler SHAW (b.6 May 1825-Cape Town,Western Cape,South Africa;d.14 Jan 1910-Kensington,London,England)
sp: John AYLIFF (b.19 May 1821-Albany,Eastern Cape,South Africa;d.3 Dec 1878-At sea)
3. John Barnabas AYLIFF (b.19 Oct 1849;d.1849)
3. Wiliam Edward AYLIFF (b.1851)
sp: Miriam RICKETTTS
4. Ethel AYLIFF
sp: Thomas TODD
4. George AYLIFF
4. Fred AYLIFF
4. Douglas AYLIFF
3. Arthur AYLIFF (b.1854;d.1862)
3. George AYLIFF (b.24 Aug 1856;d.Bef 1910)
3. Edith Charlotte AYLIFF (b.2 Jan 1860;d.Bef 1910)
3. Emily Annie AYLIFF
2. Samuel Best SHAW (b.29 Sep 1828-Hull,England;d.24 Jun 1889-Grahamstown,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
sp: Mary Ann BARNES (b.25 Jul 1838;d.13 Jun 1917)
3. Barnie SHAW (d.31 Jan 1939)
3. Anne SHAW
sp:
4. Enid Anne
sp: MOFFITT
3. George SHAW (b.Abt 1865)
3. Edward SHAW (b.12 Apr 1877-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa;d.28 Apr 1877-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
3. Samuel Best 'Boysie' SHAW (b.12 Apr 1877-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa;d.12 Aug 1888-Salem,EC,South Africa)
3. Hetty SHAW (b.Jun 1878-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa;d.16 Nov 1893-Salem,Eastern Cape,South Africa)
3. D'Urban SHAW (b.Abt 1884;d.7 Mar 1902)
2. Infant SHAW (b.15 Nov 1832;d.15 Nov 1832)
2. Daniel SHAW (b.Bef 1833;d.Bef 1861)
2. Catherine Esperance SHAW

Barnabas Shaw: My Great, Great, Great Grandfather

(Exctract from:)

A brief history of Methodism in the Cape By Tim Attwell

Cape Town, 6th September 1816

There was an urgency about the tall, athletic twenty eight year old Barnabas Shaw as he heaved the last sacks of seed into the wagon and secured them with the ploughshare, tools and wooden boxes and climbed up beside his wife, Jane Shaw. Twelve oxen ponderously hauled the wagon through the cobbled streets of Cape Town and found the track that led northwards through the grey rhenosterveld. They had bought the oxen, wagon and supplies with funds from the sale of their small property in England. There wasn’t time to wait ten months for a letter requesting funds to reach London and be answered.
They had been at the Cape for five months. The ministry among the soldiers was secure under lay leadership for the time being. Meanwhile, the Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, had refused to allow Shaw to work among the slave and indigenous population for fear of offending the slave owners and local Dutch citizenry. Shaw was frustrated, believing that they were vulnerable to exploitation and prey to the vices of the expanding empire. These were the ones he believed ‘wanted him most’ and if he was to be prevented from serving those who lived under the shadow of Table Mountain and the Governor, he would go to those beyond the reach of the Colonial administration, but not the degrading effect of modernity. Conversations with the Rev H Schmelen of the London Missionary Society and a compelling sense of God’s call convinced Jane and Barnabas Shaw that they must go to Namaqualand.

Nciemies, Namaqualand, September 1816

Chief Jaantjie Wildschutt and four chosen companions left Nciemies, their Khoi/Namaqua gathering place, and set off south, paused at the top of the pass through the Kamiesberg and looked back down to the valley below, dotted with matjieshuise and ablaze with its carpet of Spring flowers. The peace could not last. The people had to be prepared for the unscrupulous traders and land hungry trekboers who would inevitably come. How to manage the coming storm of change? The question knotted the Chief’s stomach by day and tormented his sleep at night. ‘We will go to Cape Town and find a teacher,’ he had decided.
For two weeks they marched south, covering three hundred kilometers of arid mountains. Eventually, in the distance they spied a wagon making its painstaking way north of the Olifants River. The chance meeting of Chief Wildschutt and Barnabas Shaw ‘in the middle of nowhere’ set a pattern of partnership between Wesleyan missionaries and leaders of African communities that would be repeated often in coming years. The timing had been perfect and their shared urgency more than coincidental. Both believed God had brought them together.
When the desert bloomed in Namaqualand

Leliefontein, Namaqualand, October 1816

There was a festive atmosphere as Chief Wildschutt and the Elders brought Barnabas and Jane Shaw to the gathering place at Nciemies, later re-named ‘Leliefontein’. Shaw wrote in his journal: ‘We took up our abode in a hut which had neither chimney nor even a door, and in all it was of small dimension.’ Just as well they had no furniture, sat on boxes and slept on the floor.
The Khoi/Namaqua nomadic way of life was not sustainable. A pastoral economy, supplemented by hunting in times of drought, is no match for an encroaching economy based on trade and agriculture. If they did not engage with the new economic order, learn its skills, share its trade and settle the land, the Khoi/Namaqua community would be pushed to the margins, despised as vagrants and persecuted as the San already were.
Within days Shaw began teaching agriculture and soon fast growing crops of lettuce, peas, onions and radishes augmented the traditional diet. Shaw, a capable amateur blacksmith, forged ploughs, expanding the lands under cultivation. The Khoi/Namaqua community quickly applied the lessons. Wheat became a major crop for local use and sale. With wheat came fodder and the traditional stock, hitherto fed by wandering from pasture to pasture, was fattened in the home fields. The manufacture of butter, soap and candles was achieved by the end of 1816. Carpentry, brick making, stonemasonry and construction followed, including the building of a church. By the 1830’s Leliefontein annually produced 2000 bags of wheat and boasted 3000 sheep, 3000 goats, 400 head of cattle and 150 horses, an economic hub in the region.
Meanwhile Barnabas and Jane Shaw, joined in 1817 by the Rev Edward Edwards, ensured that spiritual formation went on. Conversion to faith in Jesus Christ was followed by literacy and the training of school teachers, local preachers and class leaders. These made Leliefontein’s transforming Christian influence possible in communities throughout Namaqualand and the formation of the Namaqualand Mission.
Today the Namaqualand Mission numbers twenty six Societies, two Ministers and a host of deeply committed Local Preachers and Leaders, proud of their heritage and steeped in the traditions of Leliefontein. The Leliefontein history of wholistic mission that, ‘does every possible kind of good to people’s souls as well as to their bodies’, where people discover dignity and reconciled community through faith in Jesus Christ and express that dignity and reconciliation through economic empowerment and development, sets the standard and pattern for all Southern African Methodist Mission.
In June, 1825, two Namaqua preachers, products of Leliefontein, Johannes Jager and Jacob Links, accompanied by a visiting English missionary, William Threlfall, set off to re-establish a mission community at Warmbad, among the Bondleswart people in ‘Great Namaqualand’, now Namibia. The Warmbad mission was an initiative of the London Missionary Society, but the outbreak of war among local tribes had caused it to be abandoned. On reaching Warmbad, the San guides that Jager, Links and Threlfall employed on the way, attacked and killed them while they slept, taking their meagre possessions. Johannes Jager, Jacob Links and William Threlfall are revered as Southern African Methodism’s first martyrs and their memory is cherished to this day among the people of Namaqualand.
But the mission to Great Namaqualand did not fail. Five mission communities, including Warmbad, were established north of the Orange River, with Leliefontein as their base, eventually to be taken over by the Rhenish Mission.
A new people, a new era

Cape Town. 1820

When he arrived back in Cape Town from Leliefontein, the Rev Edward Edwards’s first concerns were the soldiers, the slaves and the Khoisan. Having spent three years with Barnabas and Jane Shaw at Leliefontein, the Wesleyan Missionary Committee in London sent him to Cape Town to take up the ministry that had been impossible, even for the likes of Barnabas Shaw, four years before. His brief was to take charge of the work that Sergeant John Kendrick had started and still flourished through the faithfulness of Kendrick’s men; to build a church and commence work among the slave and Khoisan population.
The majority of Cape Town’s population in 1820 was made up of slaves, a variegated community taken from Indonesia, West and East Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius. Meanwhile, although the resident Khoisan people were not slaves, they were treated by the Dutch as if they were.
These were the victims of empire. For a hundred and fifty years Cape Dutch policy had been to prevent, as far as they could, the preaching of the Gospel to slaves and the Khoisan. Advocacy for them and humanitarian work among them was regarded as treasonous. When the American Declaration of Independence declared it ‘to be self evident that all men are created equal’, Jean Jacques Rousseau, in France, declared the same, and John Wesley wrote to William Wilberforce to encourage him in his campaign to end slavery, the Dutch Governor at the Cape, Ryk Tulbagh, directed that any slave found at the entrance of a church when the congregation left should be flogged. These attitudes had been unchallenged, indeed deferred to, by Lord Charles Somerset, the British Governor at the Cape in 1816. The Wesleyan Missionary Committee and Edward Edwards were about to challenge them.
It would have been uncharacteristic of a Wesleyan Methodist of those days to engage in political activism. Instead Edwards went to the marginalized people themselves and began creating cohesive communities of faith. Dignity for the oppressed was to be found, neither in changing the minds of the oppressors nor challenging oppressive customs and policies, but first in the discovery of grace, in encounter with the Lord who loved them and gave himself for them, in the inner transformation of the new birth and the outer expressions of holiness, of love for one another, of disciplined lives and the arts of co-operation and mutual support. The time would come when oppressive customs and policies would not be sustainable against the emergence of a strong body of people made new. In 1828 the Colonial Administration declared by Ordinance that Hottentots [sic] were “entitled to every privilege to which any other British subjects are entitled.”
Edwards began his services in a hayloft in Plein Street. Services for soldiers were in English; for slaves and Khoisan in Dutch, which Edwards made a point of learning, as had Barnabas Shaw. The hayloft gave way to a disused wine store which, in 1822, was replaced by a newly built and simple church in Barrack Street. The church was opened by the renowned London Missionary Society minister, the Rev Dr. Philip. Other church buildings followed, more ministers arrived: Samuel Broadbent, James Archbell, William Shrewsbury, William Threlfall. Shaw returned from Namaqualand in 1826 and was joined by Robert Snowdall. In 1828 the church was built at Simonstown and is still in use today, its spire a hillside landmark that helped generations of ship’s pilots to find safe passage into the harbour. In 1829 a new church was built in Wynberg. But services and Societies were not limited to churches. Societies were formed in private homes in the most impoverished neighbourhoods, on Robben Island, on the farms at Rondebosch, Diep River, Somerset West, Stellenbosch and as far afield as Caledon, a sixty mile ride on horseback, east across the Hottentots Holland Mountains.
Thanks to laity and ministers like John Kendrick, George Middlemiss, Barnabas Shaw, Edward Edwards and many more, the Wesleyan Methodist Church was ready when life at the Cape was changed forever: 1st August 1834, the freeing of the slaves.
Proclaiming liberty to the captives

Cape Town, Monday, 31st July 1834

Although it was “business as usual” in Cape Town, there really was only one topic of conversation. In August 1833 King William IV of Great Britain had signed into Law an Act of Parliament that declared that slaves throughout the British Empire would be free on the 1st August 1834.
With 39000 slaves in the Cape Colony, a larger group than any other, a mixture of dread and expectancy filled the air. Fears of vengeance were whispered over dinner in wealthy homes, there was talk of widespread vagrancy, homelessness, drunkenness and disorder, prediction of financial ruin for slave owners, complaint about the cumbersome arrangements made for compensation. But also in the air was a sense of wonder, of beginning, of release, of the eventual triumph of right over wrong and deliverance from sin that brings a freshness to the faces of people, both sinners and sinned against, a sense of privilege at being part of a moment when history takes a decisive turn toward the good.
Since the 1770’s, sixty years before, the campaign for the Abolition of Slavery had been gaining ground in Britain, a movement that British Methodists had supported wholeheartedly with petitions to Parliament, pamphlets raising the awareness of the evils of slavery, public meetings addressed by missionaries on home leave, prayers and sermons in class meetings and worship services.
At the Cape there were already many Methodist Societies made up of English immigrants, Slaves and Khoisan. Class meetings were routinely mixed. Services in Dutch and English had been the pattern from the beginning.
As the afternoon of the 31st July 1834 wore into evening people began to move toward Cape Town’s churches. Most were slaves, but there were others who had, like Simeon, prayed, waited and worked for this salvation. Soon the churches were packed and worship was passionate, prayers full of emotion. Barnabas Shaw presided over the service in the Wesleyan Methodist Church and, at the stroke of midnight, with a voice breaking with emotion, cried out: “Slavery is dead!” The Service could not continue as the congregation broke out in loud shouts of thanksgiving and praise to God, newly freed men and women wept with great sobs.
The next day, 1st August 1834, the first day of the Emancipation of the Slaves, was celebrated in the Government Gardens in Cape Town with a huge feast of meat and bread given to thousands of newly freed slave children.