Catherine Mulgrave
Catherine Elisabeth Mulgrave also Gewe (19 November 1827 ─ 14 January 1891) was an Angolan-born Jamaican Moravian pioneer educator, administrator and missionary who accompanied a group of 24 Caribbean mission recruits from Jamaica and Antigua and arrived in the Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg, now Osu, Accra in Ghana in 1843. Mulgrave was a leading figure in pedagogy and the education programme for girls in both Jamaica and on the Gold Coast. She was the Basel Mission’s first female teacher active on the Gold Coast. Under the auspices of the society, she played a pioneering role in the Christian women ministry of the Protestant movement in colonial Ghana. Catherine Mulgrave was also one of the first African woman teachers in the missionary educationalist system in Africa.
Catherine Mulgrave
On arrival in the Gold Coast colony, the Caribbean recruits relocated to Akropong. Riis and Thompson had regular misunderstandings and it was decided by the mission station to transfer George Thompson, together with his young bride, Catherine to Christiansborg to establish and English-language school on the coast. On 27 November 1843, a boys’ boarding middle school, the Salem School opened at Christiansborg, the oldest existing school founded by the Basel Mission. The founding schoolteachers were George Thompson, Catherine Mulgrave and young Jamaican teacher, Alexander Worthy Clerk who was part of the same group of 24 Moravian Caribbean emigrants who had earlier arrived in April 1843. Salem's school curriculum was rigorous: It included English and Ga languages, arithmetic, geography, history, religious knowledge, nature study, hygiene, handwriting and music. There was also artisanal training, including pottery, carpentry, basket and mat weaving and practical lessons in agriculture in the school garden. The first batch had 41 pupils: 34 boys and 7 girls and the first classes were held in rented premises. The school later moved to the mission house originally owned by the Danish governor which stood at the centre of the Osu coastal village and contained ground floor rooms for the school and management. On the upper floor, there were missionary apartments, girls’ school and teachers’ quarters.