William Carey is often said to be the first missionary of the modern era, but that may not be exactly true. Ten years before Carey sailed from England to India, George Leile, left the United States to plant a Baptist church in Jamaica. Furthermore, he and his Jamaican church later sent more than fifty missionaries to Sierra Leone and Liberia, Africa.
Sierra Leone was founded in 1778 and became a British colony in 1808. It was a place for the freed slaves of Great Britain and the United States and for those rescued from slave ships.
Right next door to the east, Liberia was founded in 1822 under the auspices of the American Colonization Society. On this day in 1847 it was given its independence. American Baptists quickly became interested in the evangelization of the peoples of these nations, and missionaries were sent almost as soon as the freed slaves began populating the area. It is debated yet today whether a congregation which was transplanted from Virginia pastored by Lott Carey was the first Baptist Church in Africa or if it a work started by American David George who migrated to Sierra Leone in 1792. Both of these missionaries, along with Pastor Leile in Jamaica, had grown up as slaves themselves – slaves to sin and the slaves of men – until they were made free through the Lord Jesus Christ.