Philip Quaicoe
(1741 – 17 October 1816)
The first African to be ordained as a minister by the Church of England.
Born in Cape Coast then known as (Gold Coast) and named Kweku, he was said to be the son of Birempong Cudjo, a caboceer or chief’s agent in Cape Coast. In 1754, Kweku was one of three Fante children taken to England for education by a missionary from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Rev. Thomas Thompson, M.A. (Cantab) the first Anglican missionary to West Africa.
Of the three children, Thomas Cobbers died in 1758, while William Cudjoe suffered a mental breakdown and died in 1766. Kweku fared better. The two brothers were baptized at St Mary’s Church, Islington in London on 7 January 1759, which they had attended for four years. Kweku took the name, Philip. He studied theology at the University of Oxford and in 1765 was ordained in the Church of England. Phillip Quaque was the first African to be ordained as a minister of the Church of England. The same year, he married Catherine Blunt, an English woman, and the two returned to Cape Coast the following year.
The Royal African Company employed Quaque as the chaplain at Cape Coast Castle. He set up a small school in his own house, “especially for the training of Mulatto children who were growing in large numbers”, and attempted to work as a missionary, but having forgotten most of his native tongue, Fante, he was unable to make any conversions and experienced difficulty connecting with the natives. He married twice more, these times to African women, and in 1784 sent his two children for education in London.
Philip Quaque died in 1816 in Cape Coast, aged 75 years. He was buried in the Cape Coast Castle courtyard. The Cape Coast school he established in 1766 was named the Philip Quaque Boys School in his memory.