Early life Newby was born about 1843 in
Connecticut. His father Aaron was a
slave born in
South Carolina who was
freed because he was on a visit to
Pennsylvania with his mistress after the
Act of Emancipation for the Middle States had passed. Newby grew up in
New London, Connecticut and went to Wilberforce School/Wilberforce Institution and a boarding-school at
Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. He was sent to the navy to be a naval apprentice (first black naval apprentice) for fire-raising at the age of 11 and returned home to New London three years later and was involved in slave-running to Canada. He joined the infamous
Mazeppa Club.
Family James was married on 30 September 1880, in Manhattan, to Annie, the eldest daughter of Sir Robert Tainsh (A. Tainsh, author of
An Improved Manual of Universal History, from the Creation of the World to the end of the 18th century published 1875), and worked as a missionary in
Liberia, where his wife died. He returned to Britain through ill health.
Mariner and adventurer He went to sea in the 1850s and was involved in the attempted rescue of
Anthony Burns (1854). He sailed in the Marret attempt at circumnavigating the world in the smallest ship ever. He then went wild horse hunting in Mexico and joined Colonel
John C. Frémont crossing the Rocky Mountains to California. He became a jig-dancer/sand-dancer and joined the original
Christy's Minstrels (later Moore and Burgess of London). He sailed on the
USS Niagara when she laid the first
transatlantic telegraph cable (1858) and then again on the Niagara to Japan.
United States Civil War In the
American Civil War he fought in the
54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry from 1863 to 1865.
United States Navy He was on the
USS Wateree, a US naval gunboat, which was carried onshore by a tsunami following the
1868 Arica earthquake – he states this to have been at
Callao but it appears that this incident actually happened more than 600 miles further south at
Arica after the ship had left
Callao.
Africa, Asia and Europe travels He went to India at the time of the
Indian rebellion of 1857 (Indian Mutiny). He decided to tour Europe, and after visiting Greece (
Olympic Games) and Germany (gambling at
Baden-Baden), arrived in
Edinburgh, Scotland, where he was converted through street evangelism of "
Revivalists" Meek and Mitchell. He preached in the open air and churches in Edinburgh, studied at
Henry Grattan Guinness' Harley House missionary training college in London and went to
Nigeria and
Cameroon as a missionary with the Anglicans, sailing with Bishop
Samuel Ajayi Crowther on 20 July 1876. There he worked among
Igbo people and visited mission stations at
Fernando Po, Old
Calabar, and
Victoria (Limbe, Cameroon). After working in the
Cameroons he arrived back in England 1879 after illness. He is referred to as the "late Rev James Newby", and as having been in Africa in 1879, in Thomas Lewis Johnson's
Twenty-Eight Years a Slave, or the Story of My Life in Three Continents, published in 1909, and as still living in 1884 – speaker at the Christian Institute, Bothwell Street, Glasgow. Most of what is known about Newby's life comes from [https://search.nls.uk/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=44NLS_ALMA21455859970004341&context=L&vid=44NLS_VU1&lang=en_US&search_scope=TAB1_SCOPE1&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=tab1&query=creator,exact,M%27Hardie,%20Elizabeth%20Taylor,AND&mode=advanced&o
The Prodigal Continent and Her Prodigal Son and Missionary: Or the Adventures, Conversion, and African Labours of the Rev James R Newby which is cited in Judith Becker and
Brian Stanley (eds),
Europe as the Other: External Perspectives on European Christianity, with the caveat "
a questionable account which invites closer scholarly enquiry". ==Sources==