First Cemetery in Nigeria
Many Europeans died in different parts of Africa during the era of the European enslavement of Africans , the era of Christian missions , and the colonial era on the continent. Many of these Europeans died from malaria and different kinds of tropical fevers against which most of them had no natural immunity and for which there was no efficient medicine at the time. It was much later that quinine was discovered to fight malaria. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] This is the context in which several European Christian Missionaries that moved to Badagry town beginning in 1845 died and were buried in the town. It was shortly after the arrival of the first European missionaries in Badagry that the first death was recorded among them. Mrs. Eliza Phillips Gollmer, wife of one of the leaders of the mission, Rev. Charles Andrew Gollmer (who he married after the demise of his first wife earlier in Sierra Leone ...