The Calabar mission had its origins in Jamaica when the emancipation of slaves gave weight to proposals take the Christian message to Africa. In 1846 a party landed in Old Calabar, now in Nigeria, led by Hope M. Waddell a Scottish Missionary Society missionary. The group was backed by the United Secession Church but the mission was brought under the supervision of the United Presbyterians in 1847. Waddell remained at the mission until 1859. He was joined by William Anderson, who had begun his career in Jamaica in 1839 then moved to Calabar in 1849 where he was to remain a dominant figure until 1891, and by Hugh Goldie who became the mission's leading Efik scholar and translator. Progress was at first slow, the mission concentrated partly on education and partly on preaching by which they hoped to effect both religious and social change. They were particularly concerned to alter such practices as ritual killing, the killing of twins and poison ordeals. Church membership remained small, but in the 1880s some growth was evident and the mission began a period of expansion of which the appointment of Mary Slessor to Okoyong was part. The Hope Waddell Institute in Duke Town was established during this period. Political changes in the early part of the twentieth century increased the attraction of Christianity and young African teachers, many trained by Alexander Cruickshank, as well as medical missionaries began to play a more prominent role in the church. One of these, Francis Akanu Ibiam, was to become a major figure in independent Nigeria. William Marshall Christie, one of the Calabar missionaries during this period, was ordained in Edinburgh in 1913 and immediately left for Calabar where he first became vice-principal of the Hope Waddell Training Institution then concentrated on opening schools throughout the area. He retired in 1945 in which year the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria was formally constituted. Thomas Hart was a chartered accountant and well known figure in Glasgow. He was an accountant at Calabar from 1911-1912 and again from 1913-1915 when he left and joined the army audit department. The mission itself was finally abandoned in 1960.
From the guide to the Records of the Calabar Mission, 1849-1969, (Edinburgh University Library)
