At risk of copyright infringement, I wanted to highlight for my loyal readers a super cool book of photographs that I saw pop up on eBay, leading me to the wonderful-looking shop Globus Rare Books & Archives. If you click the link (provided no one has since bought it), you’ll find for sale at the bargain-basement price of $3,750 (man I wish I was rich) a “historically significant collection of original photos, illustrating the activities of the Central Africa Mission of the London Missionary Society.” It’s so cool man. So many photos of cool things I hadn’t seen before, and it amazes me that this sort of ephemera survives and makes its way out there into the world.

Since it’s a missionary photo album, most of the pictures are focused on daily missionary life, along with travel through places they would have seen on their way to and from the mission. There are also a number of photos of contemporary life in the area, such as this one labelled “Spirit Huts – Mambwe:”

I can’t tell who made the album, though the pictures seem to range around 1905-1910. There are a few different group photos of the missionaries. The below photo is labelled “Wright, Mrs. Clark, Clark, Ross, Mrs. Turner. 1906.” So that is Rev Robert Stuart Wright, Rev Earnest Howard Clark and Harriet Emily Clark, Rev James Arthur Ross, and Gertrude Alice Turner. When I was assembling the LMS biographies I couldn’t find a picture of either of the women, so the above is the best photo I’ve seen of either Harriet Clark or Gertrude Turner. In 1906, Wright was stationed at Niamkolo, Ross and the Turners at Kambole, and I think the Clarks might have been stationed at Kawimbe (they were married there, at least). All of which to say is the above photo could have been taken in a wide variety of places and it’s hard to tell. There are plenty of cliffs around the southern part of Lake Tanganyika though I wonder if maybe it was taken on a sightseeing trip to Kalambo Falls. They certainly seem to be having a rather grand time!

This set of photos is sadder. Our friends at Globus interprets the below two captions as “Mrs. McNeil’s grave, Kawimbe” and “May & Mrs. McNeil, Abercorn, 1907”:

I’m not sure who either of these women are. I can’t find a record of any McNeil being associated with the London Missionary Society, so it may be a member of another missionary society or the British colonial administration. I’d have to do more digging and I’m not familiar with all the records. However, if the graveyard pictured is the Kawimbe church graveyard, I have been to it! I wish I had known what I was looking at when I visited and one of these days I have to go back. When I visited it, it was overgrown, and I didn’t take pictures of every gravestone (and the ones I did take aren’t very good), but going through my files I have the two below. On the bottom left is a stone that I think says “In Loving Memory of Amy, the Beloved Wife of [] McNeil.” Of course it is a bad photo, I am bad at reading this particular type of writing, and also there is no gravestone in the picture of Mrs. McNeil’s grave. But maybe they added it later. The photo on the right I thought might be the gravestone pictured as being behind Mrs. McNeil’s grave since it’s a similar shape. It’s the gravestone of Dr. Charles Mather, who died in 1898.

Also included in the album are landscape shots, and having lived in the area it is entrancing to see people a century ago enjoying the same sights. The photo at the top is Kalambo Falls, where I have also been, and it was as impressive then as it is now:

Less touristy but just as interesting to me is a panorama shot labelled “View from Niamkolo Station.” The first time I tried to find the Good News, I wound up on the plain above Mpulungu and must have stood pretty close to the spot where that photo was taken (though not exactly the same). Since then, as you can barely see in my photo, Mpulungu has built up a lot more since then, but the distant shores of Lake Tanganyika fade away in just the same way.

Besides landscape shots, there are architecture shots. The below photo (as you can see) is labelled as the church in Kambole. Since the album spans about 1905-1910, this would have 10-15 years after the mission at Kambole first opened. USC Libraries has another collection of LMS Central Africa Mission photos, and this photo is also labelled as “The Church” in Kambole. It is from a different angle but looks like it could probably be the same building, except in the linked photo the church has a cross on the top which I don’t see in the above photo. The linked photo is labelled as being circa 1925, so another 10-15 years afterwards and has definitely gotten a new thatching job at the least. Still, pretty neat to see the same subject (potentially) a number of years apart.

Then there are some more adventure-oriented photos. The stern-on shot at left at bottom is labelled “LMS Canoe T’yika.” There were a few different canoes owned and operated by the LMS through the years. This one doesn’t seem to have had a name, but looks to be the same canoe pictured in the story “Afloat and Ashore in Central Africa,” by the Rev. R. Stewart Wright published in the November 1905 edition of the Chronicle:

And then speaking of boats, here are two more! Neither of them are in our usual area of operations for this blog, but are neat nonetheless. The ship on the left below is identified as the SS Clement Hill at its launch. The Wikipedia article differs, but according to The Lake Steamers of East Africa by L.G. “Bill” Dennis she was launched on December 21, 1906 in Kisumu (Lake Victoria), and she carried 250 tons of cargo and passengers in “elegant accommodation.” On the right is the SS Queen Victoria, a cute little boat not covered in Lake Steamers but which makes an appearance in this pdf. According to that pdf she was put into use on Lake Malawi by 1898, making her probably around a decade old in the above photo, give or take.

Anyways, as long as it hasn’t been sold yet you should def check out the album, there are more pictures of Zambia, Zanzibar, and Uganda, and it’s all super cool. And then someone should give me enough money to buy the thing. If you’re reading this from Globus Books then please don’t be mad at me, I just want everyone to know about this fantastic photo album you have.