Willoughby , William Charles , 1857-1938 , missionary

Born at Redruth, Cornwall, England, 1857; studied at Spring Hill Theological College, Birmingham; appointed by the London Missionary Society (LMS) to central Africa and ordained as a Congregational minister, 1882; returned home with malaria, 1883; resumed study at Spring Hill; minister in Perth, Scotland, 1885-1887; married Charlotte Elizabeth Pountney (d 1940), 1885; engaged in deputation work for the LMS, 1887-1889; minister in Brighton, 1889-1892; appointed LMS missionary to the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana), 1892; went to Palapye to work among the Bamangwato of the Christian chief Khama (Kgama) III, 1893; accompanied Khama and other chiefs, Bathoen and Sebele, to England to help them oppose Cecil Rhodes's demands for administrative rights over the Protectorate, 1895; a member of the South African Native Races Committee, London, 1900-1908; removed with the Bamangwato tribe to Serowe, 1903; appointed first principal of the proposed LMS Central School for Bechuanaland, 1903; established the school, named the Tiger Kloof Native Institution, on a farm near Vryburg in the Cape Colony; local correspondent of the Royal Anthropological Society from 1905; gave evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Assembly of the Cape of Good Hope, 1908; resigned as principal of Tiger Kloof owing to ill-health, 1915; responsible for Molepolole mission, 1914-1917; visited Australia and New Zealand on an LMS deputation, 1917; returned to England via America, 1918; Professor of African Missions, Kennedy School of Missions of Hartford Seminary, Conneticut, USA, 1919-1931; elected Vice-President of the Fourth International Congregational Council, 1920; awarded honorary doctorate of sacred theology, Hartford Seminary, on his retirement, 1931; settled in England; Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; died in Birmingham, 1938. Publications include: Native Life on the Transvaal Border (1900); Tiger Kloof (1912); Race Problems in the New Africa (1923); The Soul of the Bantu: a Sympathetic Study of the Magico-Religious Practices and Beliefs of the Bantu Tribes of Africa (1928); Nature Worship and Taboo (1932).