Henry Hare Dugmore
Encyclopedia
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n missionary, writer and translator, was born in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, son of Isaac and Maria Dugmore. The family emigrated when his father was financially ruined after being forced to pay the debts of a relative for whom he had stood surety
Surety
A surety or guarantee, in finance, is a promise by one party to assume responsibility for the debt obligation of a borrower if that borrower defaults...
. The Dugmore family sailed to South Africa on the vessel Sir George Osborn in 1820 as part of the Gardner party of 1820 Settlers
1820 Settlers
The 1820 Settlers were several groups or parties of white British colonists settled by the British government and the Cape authorities in the South African Eastern Cape in 1820....
.
Conversion and missionary work
In 1830 Dugmore became a committed member of the Wesleyan MethodistMethodist Church of Great Britain
The Methodist Church of Great Britain is the largest Wesleyan Methodist body in the United Kingdom, with congregations across Great Britain . It is the United Kingdom's fourth largest Christian denomination, with around 300,000 members and 6,000 churches...
church, and began to study for ordination. In the late 1830s he was appointed as the successor to the missionary William Boyce, who ran a Wesleyan mission station in the rural Eastern Cape
Eastern Cape
The Eastern Cape is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are Port Elizabeth and East London. It was formed in 1994 out of the "independent" Xhosa homelands of Transkei and Ciskei, together with the eastern portion of the Cape Province...
at Mount Coke, near King William's Town
King William's Town
King William's Town is a town in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa along the banks of the Buffalo River. The town is about 40 minutes' motorway drive WNW of the Indian Ocean port of East London...
. Dugmore quickly became fluent in the Xhosa language
Xhosa language
Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said...
, and spent the next twenty years undertaking missionary work. He was jointly responsible for the first translation of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and Psalms
Psalms
The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...
into the Xhosa language, and composed a large number of Xhosa hymns, some of which are still sung today.
Later life
In 1860 Dugmore moved to the town of QueenstownQueenstown, Eastern Cape
Queenstown, named after Queen Victoria, is a town in the middle of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, roughly half way in between the towns of Cathcart and Sterkstroom. It is currently the commercial, administrative, and educational centre of the prosperous surrounding farming district...
where he spent the rest of his life. He continued to write, and became involved in a large number of clubs and societies. In addition, he became the focus of many visits by missionaries from Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, and was noted for his oratory and public speaking on sacred and secular subjects - in both English and Xhosa.