Occupation Reverend Education Basel Mission Name Carl Reindorf | Ethnicity Ga Nationality British Subject, | |
Born Carl Christian Reindorf
9 October 1834
Accra, Gold Coast ( 1834-10-09 ) Died July 13, 1917, Accra, Ghana Books History of the Gold Coast and Asante | ||
Carl Christian Reindorf (31 May 1834 – †1 July 1917) was a Gold Coast-born pioneer historian, teacher, farmer, trader, physician and pastor who worked with the Basel Mission. He wrote The History of the Gold Coast and Asante in the Ga language, considered a pioneering work. The work was later translated into English and published in 1895 in Switzerland. He used written sources and oral tradition, interviewing more than 200 people in the course of assembling his history.
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Biography
Reindorf was born in Prampram, Gold Coast, the son of Carl Hackenburg Reindorf, who was of half-Danish heritage, and Anowah Cudjoe, who was an ethnic Ga from Dutch Accra. He received his early education at the Danish language school at the Christiansborg Castle from 1842 to 1847 and at the Basel mission school at Osu between 1847 and 1855. On 13 October 1872 he was ordained a minister. Earlier, he had worked for an uncle as a trader for two years. Given his knowledge of traditional herbal medicine, Reindorf acted as the physician and surgeon to trewounded soldiers during an 1870 local war between the Ga and Akwamu peoples. He was the headmaster of the all boys' middle boarding school, The Salem School at Osu in 1873 and taught as an assistant teacher of history at the Basel Mission Seminary at Akropong. He also engaged in large-scale coffee farming at a place he named "Hebron" near the hamlet of Adenkrebi close to Aburi.
He finished work on his notable book.A History of the Gold Coast and Asante in 1889.