A NOVEL documenting the life of Cornwall’s first missionary, Jacob Grigg, was released recently and gives an insight into a long forgotten segment of Launceston’s history.

Author Stephen Dray explains in the preface of ‘Jacob Grigg: Cornwall’s First Missionary’ that he ‘seemed to have been something of an embarrassment and had been air-brushed out of the history of the period’ — intriguing.

Mr Grigg was baptised in St Stephens by Launceston on July 9, 1796. He was the second child of John and Mary (neé Crocker) who had married at the same church on April 14, 1766. Jacob had an older sister, a younger brother and two younger sisters.

He was the third Baptist Missionary Society missionary and was the first English missionary to volunteer for work in Africa. He was later expelled from Sierra Leone by the governor and spent the rest of his life in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio among the largely pioneering communities. There, he was reared as one of the ‘finest preachers, evangelists and theological thinkers of his generation’.

Unfortunately he suffered for his commitment to emancipation and in later years fought, and won, his battle with alcoholism.

The books note that almost a century after Mr Grigg’s death his memory lived on. During the Second World War a chaplain to an African-American group of soldiers, who were stationed in Launceston at the time, approached the then mayor of the town, Alderman Gregg, and asked ‘I wonder if you are descended from a man called Jacob Grigg, who came to America many years ago, and is remembered for all that he did for slaves’.

The author, Mr Dray, married his Cornish wife just over forty years ago and said she and her ancestry were among the reasons he began researching Cornish persons with links to the church.

Speaking about his inspiration, Mr Dray said: “I married my Cornish wife, Anne, just over 40 years ago in Penzance Baptist Church. As a Christian minister, I was rather proud that, among her ancestors, were Henry Martyn the pioneer missionary and Billy Bray the famous Methodist lay-preacher. However, I also discovered, rather fortuitously, that the second minister of Penzance Baptist Church was a long-forgotten religious and social pioneer during the first part of the 19th century. My interest whetted, I researched George Charles Smith for about a decade and, eventually, published my findings in ‘A Right Confloption Down Penzance’ for which I also received a doctorate in Paris.

“As I undertook this project, I discovered other Cornish persons — or those who had spend most of their lives in Cornwall — who had a significant role in the social and spiritual life of both the Duchy and the wider national and international context. However, they, too, had been forgotten: perhaps because British history is largely written with London as the centre!

“I developed, therefore, a desire to bring these people, who had lurked in the shadows of my earlier research, back into the light and to a recognition that they deserved- above all in Cornwall.”

Speaking about his work on John Grigg of Launceston, Mr Dray said: “Latterly, I have been occupied in ‘bringing to life’ two men from east Cornwall [Jacob Grigg and John Eyre from Bodmin].

“Jacob Grigg from Launceston was the first modern missionary to Africa and, for most of his life lived in America, was one of the earliest and most vocal promoters of the emancipation movement and a widely respected theologian and minister; he had a catalytic impact on the missionary movement in the USA. His nephew, also from Launceston, became a millionaire publisher, banker and philanthropist and was related by marriage to the presidential candidate who was defeated by Abraham Lincoln.”

Mr Dray has also begun research into another missionary who has connections with Launceston.

He said: “The other person is John Eyre of Bodmin — and whose brother was a chemist in Launceston! An Anglican clergyman, he was probably the most significant influence in promoting, for example, modern missions, ‘Sabbath’ Schools for the education of the poor and other charitable initiatives. He played an important role in the formation of the Bible Society. I hope to publish his biography in 2018.”

The book can be purchased at The Christian Bookshop in Launceston.