Rather desirable first edition of the life of Melville B. Cox [1799-1833], the first Methodist Episcopal missionary to the freed American slaves sent to Liberia, Africa as a part of the efforts of the Colonization Societies.
Cox's story is one of unbridled passion for the Great Commission. Initially an itinerant in New England, he was forced to leave the field as a result of Tuberculosis after just three years. He moved and became an editor, got married, and had a daughter, who died after just two years of life from cholera. He had taken another pastorate and resigned, offering himself to the mission field. He was sent to Liberia as the first Methodist Episcopal missionary to the freed slaves, largely from the north, who had been returned to together form a new country in Africa.
He was chided for even thinking of going with his health. He went. He set up Sunday Schools, an agricultural school, and was an effective evangelist. The critics were, in some ways, correct. He arrived in 1833 and was dead before the end of the year. So inspiring was his desire to do something for these ones whom Jesus loved and who were owed so much, that his death and the present memoir proved the impetus for many others accepting the call to take his place. His one year of ministry in Liberia yielded centuries of ministry in the people's lives it inspired.
The present copy, interestingly, purports to have been given to Mrs. Francis [Bloodgood] Hall by J. E. Joyner of Virginia, likely just after Hall's death in 1863.
Francis Bloodgood Hall [1827-1863] was a chaplain to the New York 16th Infantry. During the action at Salem Heights, Fredericksburg, Virginia on May 3, 1863, Chaplain Hall risked his own life to carry the wounded Union soldiers from the front back to camp for treatment. While recovering a young, wounded soldier, he himself was shot and killed. This was the first battle Hall was ever engaged in as a Chaplain. . . making the short-lived ministry of Cox a natural parallel.
Rev. J. E. Joyner, the inscriber, was himself a chaplain to the 57th Virginia, a Confederate Regiment that saw action largely in Virginia.
The volume is signed by F. Hall on the title, so likely Francis' [male form] before being later gifted to his wife by Joyner, perhaps taken from the Camp after Hall's death by Joyner and mailed with an accompanying letter to his widow, describing his final heroism.
Cox, Melville B. Remains of Melville B. Cox, Late Missionary to Liberia. With a Memoir. Boston. Light and Horton. 1835. 240pp.
Good - condition with fading and staining to cloth as shown, though very solid and crisp on interior with some scattered foxing as shown.