Three Aces Of Spades And A Bishop
By Lawrence A. Zumo, MD
Contributing Writer
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| Bishop Charles Clifton Penick |
In the latter part of the 19th century, a series of events culminated in the discovery of human potential, talent and genius by exposure to opportunities for three young kids from deep darkest Africa. This was all made possible by the magnanimity of an American missionary Bishop, Rev Charles Clifton Penick (12/9/1843-4/13/1914), a friar of integrity, conscience and visionary foresight- no better example of erstwhile American humanitarianism, rugged individualism and enterprising exploration. Bishop Charles Clifton Penick was the third missionary bishop of Cape Palmas and Parts Adjacent, Liberia from 1877 to 1883. He was a Virginia native and consecrated at the Church of the Messiah, Baltimore, Maryland on February 13, 1877. Shortly after his consecration he set sail for Africa to preach the Gospel and works of Jesus Christ to dark Africa. He summarized his mission and work history in his book: “More Than A Prophet” published by Thomas Whittaker Press in 1881. He reached Cape Palmas Liberia in December 1877. After a brief visit to Cape Palmas, he decided to move up to Cape Mount and established an Episcopal Mission there in 1878. He had several reasons to choose Cape Mount: among them, the hospitality of the locality, the intelligence of the people, given this history of the Vais as the only tribe at that time on the African continent to have invented a readily available written alphabet and his fascination with the tribes ability to conduct epistolary communication in their own language, a rarity at that time of most tribes of all mankind.
The mission school began at once and grew quickly. Its aim was to provide a basic Christian, Western education, to fulfill the Church’s proselytizing ambition. To earn their keep, enrolled students were expected to do manual labor as well. Among the students, three stood out and these ultimately were beneficiaries of Bishop’s goodwill to go to the USA for further academic enlightenment.
By coincidence or by celestial design, his interaction with three Native Liberian aces was to forever change their lives, their lot, their vision of the world as well as further deepen the Bishop’s missionary and anthropological convictions. Had these three native Sherpas had been allowed to make a true impact on the new nation of Liberia and not hampered and hindered by the dominant hereditary kakistocracy of Liberia, it is a strongly postulated that the trajectory of nation’s tragic history since independence in 1847 would have been vastly altered for the better.
Bishop Penick met these two of these Liberian kids Joseph Jeffery Walters and Lewis Penick Clinton (aka Somayou Zea Clayou) under different circumstances and a third Thomas Narvin Flo Lewis was a beneficiary of what Bishop Penick had built and left in Liberia. The stories of these three remarkable individuals continue below:
All in all, Bishop Charles Penick sent three promising kids to the USA as his charge, at different times. From all the history available, these might have been the best and brightest amongst his houseboys whom he wanted to have exposed to better educational opportunities. Joseph Jeffrey Walters was sent first to the USA in 1883, Lewis Penick Clinton followed in 1884. They both entered Storer College in West Virginia as an educational stepping stone before enrolling in other colleges that could accept them in America. Pela Penick was a third student sent but being much younger, he had to wait for several years until the late 1880s before enrolling at Storer College-but nothing was ever heard about him or his whereabouts since then. The same was the fate of Nettie, the young house girl of Rev and Mrs. Curtis Grubb, missionaries at Cape Mount from 1878 to 1881, who brought her to the USA when they returned home to the USA. However, Thomas Narvin Flo Lewis, indirectly connected to Bishop Charles C Penick would fill that void in a spectacular way.
Joseph Jeffrey Walters, a native of Vai, was born in 1862. There is not much known about his parentage and other family details but that he was a bright student and that between 1878 to 1882 he was a student at the Cape Mount Mission. He was sent to the USA as a charge of Bishop Charles C Penick in 1883 at the age of 21. He started at Storer College, completing his studies there in 1888. He began studies and completed his bachelor’s degree at Oberlin College in Ohio. While there he wrote his seminal novel, Guanya Pau, the first full-length novel in English by a black African. It was published in 1891( 44 years after Liberia’s Declaration of Independence and at a time natives like Joseph Walters were technically stateless and not considered citizens of the Republic of Liberia) by Lauer & Mattill Publishers, Cleveland, Ohio. This remains his extraordinary contribution to Liberian intellectual and literary golden age. He contracted TB, which was untreatable in those days. He returned to Liberia in 1893. He began teaching at the Cape Mount Mission School in 1894 but his promising life was cut short by the disease in December 1894. His novel: Guanya Pau, the story of an African princess, dealt with themes such as misogyny, childhood betrothals, oppression of women, advocacy of women equality and rights, suffrage by extension, African religion vs western Christianity, the beautiful sceneries of Africa and aspects of cultural effacements. Had he not been cut down by disease and had he been allowed to contribute to Liberian public governance, one can only wonder what an impact such a brilliant mind could have contributed to Liberia’s development and its trajectory towards national unity and peaceful coexistence.
Lewis Penick Clinton’s story is as interesting as intriguing. He was born Somayou Zea Clayou in either 1865 or 1866, heir apparent to the throne of his grandfather, Zea of the Bassa Kingdom. Somayou’s father was also a subking in that region and Samayou’s mother was his favorite wife. It is reported that a rival uncle was seeking the throne while Somayou was secretly being trained in the traditional society school to be the successor upon his father’s death. Somayou’s father died abruptly in 1878. The rivalry with his uncle began and fearing for his life, he fled to the coast of Liberia where he met an American trader named Clinton, who taught Somayou English. Not long after learning English, he was introduced to Episcopal Bishop, Charles C Penick who was traveling from Cape Palmas to Cape Mount to establish the mission school. He came under the tutelage of Bishop Pennick for five years at the Cape Mount Mission School which was established in 1878. What serendipity or celestial design! He thereafter adapted the name; Lews Penick Clinton. Being an outstanding student at the school, Bishop Charles Penick arranged to have him sent, as “his charge” at the age of 18 or 19 to the USA for further education in 1884, a year after the arrival of Joseph Jeffrey Walters. He studied five years at Storer College ( a historically black normal school in Harpers’s Ferry, West Virginia established after the American Civil War by the Freewill Baptist Missionary for the education of negros from 1865-1955). In 1890 Lewis Clinton moved to Maine where he studied for a year at the Nichols Latin School and then for another six years, attended Bates College and its affiliated Cobbs Divinity School and graduated with high honors. At Bates College, he was a member of the Polymnia debating society and was active in social events, and sports including lawn tennis and was also a contributing writer to the Bates Student Newspaper.
In a notable article for that newsmagazine, he penned an essay entitled: “No Christmas in Heathen Africa on January 1, 1897, in which he lamented the bondage of superstition and ignorance his people were locked under. In it, he also described the falsehood of sassywood and the torture meted to stoic men and women who rejected such practices. He paid for his educational expenses at school there through lecturing and writing. Lewis Clinton was a polyglot. He spoke English, French, German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Bassa, Kru and Vai. Lewis Clinton aka Somayou Zea Clayou was ordained a Free Baptist Minister in 1898. In 1899 he returned to Liberia and founded the Baptist mission sponsored by the Freewill Baptist Church near Fortsville in Grand Bassa County, Liberia. He also established a farm consisting of several hundred acres granted by the Bassa people seventy five miles east of Monrovia and fifty miles from the coastline.
There he was assisted by another Storer college graduate, Rev. A. K. Peabody. The mission expanded to contain dormitories and farms which provided agricultural, mechanical and spiritual training in English and oral native Bassa language as written Bassa language was not crystallized yet. That would have to await the arrival on the scene of Thomas Narvin Flo Lewis, a Storer College alumnus and an indirect beneficiary of Bishop Charles Penick’s visionary humanism. Many Americo Liberians sent their children to Lewis Penick Clinton’s mission school. In 1910, Lewis Clinton was temporarily an invited guest to lecture about his work to the Baptists at Ocean Park, Maine as well as a guest lecturer at Clark University in Massachusetts. His lecture was entitled: “The Hinterland of Liberia” In 1917, the Northern Baptist Convention (formerly called the Freewill Baptist) sent Bates College Professor, Lyman Jordan to formally dedicate the Bible Industrial Academy at the established Baptist Mission near Fortsville, Grand Bassa County. Scanty details exists about his life and work thereafter. However abundant historical evidence exist that he was forced by Liberian government prevailing behavior to bar such enlightened natives from any where near public governance. Imagine what an impact he would have had on Liberia’s development, unification and intellectual advancement at the national level!
Thomas Lewis born Marvin Flo was born in approximately 1870 in Hwrazohn near Charlie Junction in District #3 Grand Bassa county under very ordinary circumstances to a local Bassa Chief named Mandeh Flo. He was a young lad growing up when his life suddenly changed with the death of his mother reportedly in childbirth. As was customary, a soothsayer was invited at his mother’s funeral. The soothsayer without any evidence produced went on to say that Narvin Flo would be the next person to die from that family. Fearing for his life, Narvin Flo escaped town and took the arduous journey by foot from there to the Cape Mount Mission which he somehow heard of. The journey was approximately 120 miles and this could have taken about a month and a half to two months to make.
Circumstances of his enrollment as the mission school is not available but what is known is that he excelled in his studies and the headmistress at the school being quite impressed with his performance recommended him to go to the USA for further studies. He was thus given the name Thomas Narvin Flo Lewis, named after the headmistress and applied for his visa to America in 1892. He traveled to the USA on the German steamer, Liberia, as 20 years old. He had to fend for himself as he had no initial sponsor. He arrived at the New York Harbor Port of Entry, Ellis Island essentially penniless but determined. After much searching, he obtained work with a road gang building the highway between New York and New Jersey. While working with this crew in 1895, he became sick and had to be seen by the company doctor. When it was his time to see the medical doctor, Dr. Marcus Clawson- who was not only surprised about the presence of a black this far in America’s north at that time of America’s history but by the brilliance of his all-white teeth in a very dark skinned black man. Dr. Marchs Clawson became fascinated with this black African’s story and his shining white teeth. Gradually Dr. Marcus Clawson got all of Thomas Narvin Flo Lewis’s interesting story and decided to refer him to his brother, Dr. Frank Clawson, DDS, a dentist who would be his friend and sponsor throughout the rest of his stay in the USA. Dr. Frank Clawson helped him to go to and sequentially graduate from Storer College, Lincoln University and then finally Syracuse University School of Medicine on June 5, 1907, as a fully fledge physician. Due to the difficulties Narvin Flo experienced with mastering English, he decided to crystallize oral Bassa language to a written form and used it as a conduit to understanding his lessons being taught in English. Thru this way he was able to successfully complete his studies in the USA. The value of your mother tongue at its best!
After graduating, he travelled back to Liberia thru Brazil (where he observed Bassa language speakers, to his utmost surprise) and Dresden Germany where he commissioned a printing press in Bassa after the typesetting was done by a local printing press in New York but L. Frank Baum, the press owner and of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz fame. He returned to Liberia in 1910 and got to work as a medical doctor, typesetter, Bassa Vah script printer, and educator. His work spread far and wide and became very influential. Fearing that, he would steal the limelight of the government of Liberia, archival sources point to the government of Liberia orchestrating his early demise. He is interred in Hruahzohn, Grand Bassa County.
His enduring legacy is the inventor of the Bassa Vah script and an educator of his people. Amazing what he would have done for his county, his nation, and the world had he lived out his life to the fullest! A testament to the old adage that Liberia’s best brains are in its cemeteries-almost all never allowed to contribute to Liberia’s progress. History is my witness! Many much thanks, nevertheless, to the venerable Bishop Charles Clifton Penick for his visionary humanism enabling three aces of spades from Liberia to make an enduring, yet incomplete, contribution to Liberia, ye African, and World history.
Thank you!
References
- https://archive.org/details/morethanprophet00peni
- https://books.google.com/books?id=x_Q4AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11#v=onepage&q&f=false
- http://fwbhistory.com/?p=291
- https://www.sylff.org/pdf/fellows/2011_mb_34.pdf
About the Author: Lawrence A. Zumo, MD, FAAN(Neurology) Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology Baltimore, Maryland, USA