Portrait of Tiyo Soga

Photographer unknown.

A carte de visite albumen print portrait measuring 53 x 73 mm (oval). The print is mounted as the frontispiece to: Chalmers, John A (1877), Tiyo Soga : a page of South African mission work, Edinburgh, Andrew Elliot. The half-length portrait shows Tiyo Soga dressed in European clothes and seated beside a table with a book in one hand.

Soga (1829-1871) was the first black South African ordained as a Christian minister. Tiyo Soga's father was a counsellor in the Ngqika branch of the Xhosa people and his mother was a Christian convert. Trained at United Presbyterian Church of Scotland Mission Schools at Cape Town, and later at Lovedale from 1844-46, Soga went to Glasgow in 1846 and was baptised there in 1848. He returned to his evangelical work among the Xhosa from 1848-51, when he again visited Scotland and was ordained in 1856. The following year he married a Scottish woman, Janet Burnside, before opening a mission station for the Xhosa on the Mgwali River which he supervised until 1868. In that year he founded a Mission Station for Chief Sarili at (the later named) Somerville. Soga's early promise was cut short by his premature death but he did manage to complete the translation of the Gospels and the first part of Pilgrim's Progress into Xhosa.

Please cite as Cambridge University Library: Royal Commonwealth Society Library, Portrait of Tiyo Soga, Y305N

For another biography of Soga see: Williams, Donevan (1978), 'Umfundisi : a biography of Tiyo Soga, 1829-1871', South Africa : Lovedale Press.

Indexed

This collection level description was entered by KS using information from the original typescript catalogue.