Thomas Birch Freeman (6 December 1809 in Twyford, Hampshire – 12 August 1890 in Accra) was an Anglo-African Wesleyan minister, missionary, botanist and colonial official in West Africa. He is widely regarded as a pioneer of the Methodist Church in colonial West Africa, where he also established multiple schools. Some scholars view him as the “Founder of Ghana Methodism”. Freeman's missionary activities took him to Dahomey, now Benin as well as to Western Nigeria. Biographical synopsis Born in Twyford, Hampshire, Thomas Birch Freeman was the son of an African father, Thomas Freeman, and an English mother, Amy Birch. He worked as a gardener and botanist for Sir Robert Harland (1765–1848) at Orwell Park near Ipswich until dismissed for abandoning Anglicanism for Wesleyan Methodism. Under Freeman, nine schools were established in the colony of Gold Coast (present day Ghana) in 1841, three of which were for girls. He continued opening schools, and by 1880 had about 83 schools with roughly 3,000 students. In 1838, he went as a Methodist missionary to West Africa, founding Methodist churches in the Gold Coast in Cape Coast and Accra, and establishing a mission station in Kumasi. In 1850, Freeman established agriculture farms at Buela near Cape Coast (all in present-day Ghana). He also went to towns in southern Nigeria and to the kingdom of Dahomey. In 1843, while on furlough in Britain, he was active in the anti-slavery cause. After resigning as a missionary in 1857, he was employed by the colonial government as civil commandant of Accra district from 1857 to 1873. Freeman married three times. His first two wives, who were white British women, died soon after they arrived in West Africa, and he subsequently married a local Fante woman. In 1873, he rejoined the Mission, and together with his son, promoted Methodist work in the southern Gold Coast. Early life Thomas Birch Freeman was born on 6 December 1809 in Twyford, about three miles from Winchester, Hampshire, England. In those days, Winchester was a bastion of Wesleyan Methodism. His father, a gardener named Thomas was an African freedman from the West Indies, who obtained his freedom under the Emancipation Act, and was brought to England by his master, a slave-owning aristocrat. T. B. Freeman's mother, Amy Birch was a working-class Englishwoman. Amy Birch was a housemaid in the home of Freeman's father's master. Amy Birch had previously been married to John Birch,