The Presbyterian Church of Ghana

At the far end of the Church there are beautifully crafted pseudo-stained glass windows with inscriptions from the scriptures in the indigenous Ga language of Accra. There is also a chancel with an altar and a pulpit.

Most of the pews in the church are modeled after those brought over from an original chapel at Amanfrong. The walls display plaques with citations honoring the church’s faithful servants, missionaries and individuals whose contributions have supported it over time.

Sir Emmanuel Charles Quist, KT., O.B.E., the first Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana, was born in 1880 in Christiansborg, Osu. He was the son of Rev. Carl Quist, a Basel Mission minister, who was of Ga-Danish ancestry and the son of one of the three Kvist brothers (anglicized to Quist) who settled in Osu, Cape Coast and Keta.

A plaque honoring Quist behind the pulpit was erected by his wife and bears inscriptions in recognition of his pioneering role as the first African Crown Counsel and first African President of the Legislative and National Assembly of the Gold Coast, during the colonial period of British rule.

His mother, Paulina Richter, who was also ethnically mixed Ga-Danish was a descendant of the Royal House of Anomabo and of Johan Emmanuel Richter, a Danish private slave trader who later became Governor at the Christiansborg Castle. Quist was an alumni of the Osu Salem Presbyterian Boys Boarding School, established by the Basel Mission and also served as headteacher there from 1899 to 1902.

A plaque in the Osu Presbyterian Church is dedicated to Rev. Carl Christian Reindorf who was born in 1834. His grandfather was Augustus Frederick Hackenberg, a Danish official who worked as an employee of the Danish Trading Company, headquartered in the Christiansborg Castle in Osu. He arrived in Accra in 1739 on the same ship as Esau Christensen Kvist, the ancestor of Sir Emmanuel Quist, the first Speaker of Parliament in Ghana.

Augustus Hackenberg married a Ga woman called Ashiokai Wondo and they had a son named Carl Christian Reindorf Hackenberg. Augustus later became Governor of the Christiansborg Castle between 1745-46 and Fort Fredensborg until 1748. Many enslaved Africans were forcibly  transported to the Danish West Indies from these forts during the era of the transatlantic slave trade.

Rev. Carl Christian Reindorf’s mother was a Ga woman called Hannah Anowah Kudjoe Reindorf. He received his early education at the Danish language school in the Christiansborg Castle and became a minister of the Basel Mission and Osu Presbyterian Church in 1872.

His knowledge of traditional healing through herbal medicine meant that he acted as physician and surgeon to wounded soldiers in two wars in 1866 and 1870. His book “History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti”, 1895, is recognized as one of the first books documenting histories of the people of the Gold Coast from the perspective of its indigenous people.

A plaque is dedicated to all ministers who served the Osu Presbyterian Church of Ghana, from 1820 to 1978. The list features nineteen individuals, all male whose names highlight the fact that many of those who served came from families that had European origins and they were either ethnically mixed or part of the group of former enslaved Africans brought from the Caribbean to convert the African population to Christianity.

The first minister of the Church was Rev. Alexander Worthy Clerk, a freed formerly enslaved African who was born in Jamaica.