Studio portrait of Robert Moffatt, LMS missionary in Southern Africa. London, late 1860s.

A$200 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 102 x 63 mm (mount); recto of mount with printed signature of Robert Moffatt to lower margin; verso with the back mark of the London Stereoscopic Photographic Company; both the print and the mount are in excellent condition. Robert Moffatt (Ormiston, East Lothian, Scotland, December 21, 1795-Leigh, Kent, England, August 8, 1883) was a missionary and a linguist, who worked in South Africa and Botswana for more than 60 years. Of modest parentage, he had an elementary education and was raised as a Presbyterian on strict religious principles by his mother (a Scotswoman, née Anne Gardiner). He first worked as a gardener in Scotland and England. Influenced by Methodism, he determined to become a missionary and in 1816 joined the London Missionary Society (LMS). He had already met and become engaged to Mary Smith who came from Lancashire, near Manchester. He was sent out to South Africa, where he arrived in Cape Town on January 13, 1817. His fiancée, however, due to her father’s objections, did not join him for another three years. He was to begin his service in Great Namaqualand, south of the Orange River, but at first was refused permission to travel there by the local authorities. Therefore he began instead to study Dutch at Stellenbosch University until January 1818, when he began work in Great Namaqualand. He had an early success in the conversion of local ruler Jager (Christian) Afrikaner (circa 1800-1823), a Hottentot freeboot

• Binding: Hardcover

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