Students of St Augustine’s Missionary College

Picture credit: courtesy of Janet Hodgson, private collection

Nathaniel Cyril Kondile Mhala, FOUNDING MEMBER, SANC

Son of the Xhosa Chief Mhala (imprisoned on Robben Island), Nathaniel Mhala studied at Zonnebloem College near Cape Town. He proceeded to St Augustine’s, Canterbury, where he was resident from May 1867 to Christmas 1868.

In England he visited parliament to hear debates between Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone, and later retained an admiration for British democracy. He also developed and pursued interests in Anglican choral music and cricket. In 1870 he was appointed head of the Anglican school at St Mark’s in the Eastern Cape, and proceeded to become a government interpreter in King William’s Town.

In the ninth frontier war of 1877 he was brought to trial and acquitted of high treason against the colonial government. Employed in a legal office, he became increasingly involved in journalism and politics while continuing as an Anglican catechist. In the 1890s he was a founding member and vice president of the South African Native Congress (SANC), an early forerunner of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1897 he became first editor of Izwi Lanatu (The Voice of the People), a Xhosa newspaper which supported SANC interests. In later life he built an Anglican church near Berlin in the Eastern Cape. Together with other members of the Inter-State Native College Scheme he was an active advocate for the founding of an African university, eventually leading to the establishment of Fort Hare University.

Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral

the Revd Canon Arthur Margörschis, missionary in Tamil Nadu, India

Arthur Margöschis one of the better known students of the College. He entered in 1872 and went to Madras diocese on completion.

He had been at medical school before committing to missionary work and medical work was a feature of training at the College, the city’s hospital being on an adjoining site.

He served his whole ministry in the Christian town of Bethlehem in Tamil Nadu, where he ran the hospital and founded several schools, one of which bears his name. He restored and extended St. John’s Church in Nazareth and extended the mission to other nearby communities.

Like many of the College’s students he was a missionary with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and he was of high church persuasion. He seems to have been held in respect by the non-Christian people of the town and his memory is greatly revered by the local Christians.

Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Bloxham School

The Revd John Tsan Baw, Anglican missionary priest in Rangoon

John Tsan Baw was the first person of Burmese heritage to be ordained as an Anglican priest. Another missionary, Dr. Marks arranged for him to come to England to further his education and he was enrolled at Bloxham School (Banbury) where he became a prefect and cricket captain.

He enrolled at the College in 1880 and returned to Rangoon on completion. Unfortunately, the College archive seems not to have any images of him, although he became well known in Canterbury ‘for his prowess at football and cricket’ (Boggis).

There is a photograph of him in Rangoon with Dr. Marks and the Burmese congregation of St John’s College.

He married shortly after completing his training and our photograph above is a charming family study. Sadly, he died young in 1895, as did many of the College’s students: ‘of a disease contracted in the course of his work’.

However, he was well remembered in the diocese and mentioned several times after his death in the magazine of the Rangoon Diocesan Association.

The Very Revd De Berdt Hovell, Dean of Waipu, New Zealand/Aotearoa

De Berdt Hovel was the son of a surgeon in the New Zealand military who was educated in England and joined the College in 1869.

He took a full role in the College’s sporting life and was also awarded the prize for Greek. He was posted to Bombay diocese and ordained deacon there in 1873.

He later returned to New Zealand and served in two parishes before being appointed to Waiapu, where he significantly restored Anglican life. He was held in high regard in the diocese and his appointment as the first Dean of its new Cathedral was well received.

He died unexpectedly in September 1905.

The photograph was taken during his time in Canterbury, in later years he had a very full beard indeed.

Knanishu Moratkhan, educational pioneer in Persia.

(Image reproduced by kind permission of the Swenson Centre Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.)

Knanishu Moratkhan was originally from Urmia (Orumiyeh) in Persia (Iran). He was admitted to the College in 1870. Moratkhan had already been ordained a deacon in the Oriental Orthodox tradition, then referred to as the Nestorian Church. Robert Boggis writes that when he first arrived, Moratkhan could speak no English, although he knew some Russian.

On the completion of his course, he returned to his homeland and spent his ministry primarily encouraging and founding schools, the first being near his birthplace. His educational work led to him receiving the honorific title, ‘father of the people’.

He is known to have visited the US in 1887, seeking support for his schools – including from the Swedish Lutheran churches of Illinois. Knanishu’s son Joseph later studied at Augustana College; it is from their (Lutheran) archive that we obtained this photograph.

Sources: US Swedish Lutheran Archive (Augustana College), Canterbury Cathedral Archive, the StAC project at Canterbury Christ Church University.

Lawrence Walcott (St. Helena)

Lawrence Walcott was a Black British student at St. Augustine’s. His father was a barrister from the Caribbean who had met his English wife while practising in West Africa.

They settled in England and their son was baptised in St Mary’s, Primrose Hill, North London. Walcott entered the College in 1901 and had a significant role in its sporting life, captaining the soccer team. On completion he sailed to South Africa and served his curacy in Tsolo, in the Diocese of St John’s (now Mthatha).

He wrote many letters back to the Warden which are preserved in the archives. His first describes his voyage south, noting that they would shortly reach Tenerife and then sail on to St Helena and Ascension islands. The short visit to St Helena seems to have planted a seed for him as he returned there for his first appointment as a vicar.

Canon Walcott is memorialised in St Helena’s cathedral. He may well be the only Old Augustinian to feature on a postage stamp – a 25p. stamp for the quincentenary of the discovery of the island by Europeans.

Sources: Canterbury Cathedral Archive, the StAC project at Canterbury Christ Church University.

The Venerable Fortunato Pietro Luigi JosA

Luigi Fortunato grew up in what is now the Vatican City State but moved to England as a young man where he became an Anglican. He entered the College in 1871 and on completion ‘sailed’ to Guiana, the College referred to students’ destinations as their diocese of sailing.

He had a long career there with a focus on the Hindi population; he was author of textbook on that language for local use. His family have told us that he was married four times and became Archdeacon of Georgetown, although the College was not aware of that referring to him as Canon rather than The Venerable. He retired to St Endellion, in Cornwall, where he was vicar until his death. ‘He had a long and colourful history and was known to sing Italian arias while strolling along the Cornish lanes’, writes his great-grandson.

An image of him when Vicar of St Endellion is in the National Portrait Gallery collection. His son, Edgar Filippo Charles Josa entered the College in 1899 and, on completion, was posted to Antigua where the family were then living.

Cecil Majaliwa – a freed slave

(Images reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral.)

Cecil Majaliwa was rescued from slavery as a child by a British naval vessel in 1872. He was taken to Zanzibar where the Anglican bishop became his guardian. He was recommended for ministerial training and the residents of the cathedral close at Salisbury undertook to meet all the costs through their Missionary Fund. On his return from Canterbury he ministered in the Diocese of Zanzibar for the rest of his life. He was the first African to be ordained priest in what is now Tanzania.

Sources: Canterbury Cathedral Archive, the StAC project at Canterbury Christ Church University.

Stephen Garabedian (Kolkata and South Africa)

Stephen Garabedian, an Armenian by heritage, was born in Diarbakar (Turkey). He was the son of a priest who had been ordained by the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem.

The photograph is from 1898, showing Garabedian with staff and students standing outside the main entrance to the College.

Garabedian’s first posting was to the diocese of Lahore. He subsequently worked at the Bishop’s College, Kolkata, and at a number of other mission stations. In 1911 he moved to Cape Province, South Africa, where he founded a care home for women. He remained active in the Cape until his death in 1960.

Sources: Canterbury Cathedral Archive, the StAC project at Canterbury Christ Church University and D.A. Pratt (MTh Thesis) Rhodes University, 1998.

A Fresher in 1895 (Canterbury Cathedral Archive)

The REvd Gregory Mpiwa Ngcobo (1876-1931)

A Zulu, baptized and educated at the McKenzie Memorial Training College, Isandhlwana (the location of the famous and decisive Zulu Kingdom victory over the British Empire in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879). Proceeded to Hurstpierpoint College (an independent school in West Sussex) and from thence to St Augustine’s, Canterbury, in 1895.

He passed the Universities’ Preliminary Examination for Candidate’s for Holy Orders and was a missionary to KwaZulu-Natal with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel – the high church sympathising Anglican missionary society.

Ngcobo is recorded as having worked as school teacher. Later he joined the staff of the Bishop of Lebombo, who ordained him priest. There is a possible association with the St Augustine’s Church at Rorke’s Drift (inaugurated in 1898), which provided mission school buildings and a hospital.

William Howell (Malaysia)

The Reverend William Howell was born to Welsh engineer Frederick Howell and an unnamed Malayan woman on September 15, 1856. He was raised in Kuching and was taken to England in 1866 by Bishop Walter Chambers to study at St Augustine’s College in Canterbury.

Returning to Simanggang in 1878, he spent most of his life preaching in Batang Lupar. He worked with Demetrius Bailey, a naval officer employed by the Rajah of Sarawak, in the production of the first dictionary of the Dyak language. The Bodleian Library in Oxford also holds an unpublished typescript history of the early missions in Borneo written by Howell.

He was also an educator, leading the work of St. Luke’s school and successfully training young people from the school to become teachers in their turn. He married Sanan anak Nyandang, a local Iban chieftain’s daughter. They had nine children. He worked in that area until his retirement in 1928. He died 10 years later at the age of 82. 

Sources: Bodleian Library on-line catalogue, Canterbury Cathedral Archive, the StAC project at Canterbury Christ Church University, the history of St. Luke’s school, Sri Aman, Sarawak: http://smksaintlukelumni.weebly.com/history.html