Pioneering on the Congo

Nashville: Executive Committee Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church, U. S., 1906. Good. Unnumbered four-page leaflet. 21 cm. Soiling and edge-wear but still generally sound. Former owner's name at top of first page. Hard-to-decipher pencil note in lower margins on last page. Sheppard, a Presbyterian, was one of the earliest African American missionaries to the Congo, having accompanied Samuel N. Lapsley in 1890. He ended his activities in the Congo in 1910. We have tentatively dated this uncommon missionary leaflet around 1906 because of a section headed "A Glance Backward Fifteen Years" appears to start the period from when he and Lapsley arrived at Luebo, 1200 miles from the coast which probably occurred in 1891.