an acclaimed sermon at the Methodist Conference in Leeds, witnessed by a Methodist minister, the Rev. Abraham Farrar, in October 1837, he was appointed a probationary Wesleyan minister at Cape Coast after his ordination in the Islington Chapel in London on 10 October 1837. The English missionaries at Cape Coast only had a series of short stints on the Gold Coast as many died from tropical diseases. Missionary activities in West Africa Historical context Methodism was first brought to the Gold Coast by the Wesleyan Methodist Church by the Rev. Joseph Rhodes Dunwell on New Year's Day in January 1835, who was a 27-year-old preacher from England. Early Wesleyan missionaries had an Anglican heritage. From the late 1400s onwards, Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries began arriving on the Gold Coast, though their evangelising endeavours yielded no results. In the 18th century, the Anglican missionaries founded a school at Cape Coast where the Rev. Philip Quaque was an educator. The school curriculum focused entirely on the Biblical knowledge and building numeracy and literacy competencies by studying the 3Rs: reading, writing and arithmetic. The textbooks used were scriptural pamphlets distributed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Later, the curriculum was broadened to include the arts and crafts in agriculture, commerce and joinery. The early missionaries also emphasised girl-child education. This mission school led to the mushrooming of Bible study groups or informal Bible bands, devoted to reading and studying the Scriptures in 1831/32 when there were no European missionary or castle chaplain. The groups kept formal records of their prayer meetings. Earlier in 1834, an attendee of one of these groups, William de Graft requested for copies of the Holy Book through Captain Potter, the captain of a merchant sailing vessel named “Congo” and a congregant of the Bristol Wesleyan Methodist Church. de Graft had attended the Cape Coast Castle School and worked as a trader at Dixcove. He had earlier fallen out with the colonial Governor over theological differences and eventually persecuted, jailed and deported from Cape Coast to Dixcove while other native Christians were threatened with a fine. A request for missionaries was made by one John Aggrey, a Fante royal who was initially publicly flogged, denied the Cape Coast paramount chieftaincy due to his Christian faith. By 1864, he was the reigning sovereign of Cape Coast, devoted to the improving the spiritual welfare