| Description | Letters and journal letters written by Frances Dennis relating to her service as a CMS missionary at Onitsha, Ugboke and Owerri in Southern Nigeria, 1902-1907, and including reports of journeys in the hinterland of Asaba and Benin and a journey from Ibadan to Idumiye in 1907. Also including a typescript account of her experiences as a missionary, notes on Ibo folk tales and proverbs, photographs, correspondence from staff of the CMS UK office, periodicals and further miscellaneous papers.
The letters from Dennis are mostly circular letters addressed to 'My dear Friends'. |
| Administrative History | Frances Mary Dennis (b 1874) was accepted as a CMS missionary in 1897. She served in Southern Nigeria and was stationed at Onitsha, Ugboke and Owerri. She had two brothers and a sister who were also CMS missionaries, Thomas, Edward and Ellen. Her fiance, Rev Charles Geoffrey Hensley, also a CMS missionary, died in 1901. Frances resigned from missionary service in 1909 when she married Rev Stephen Hensley.
Source: Register of missionaries (clerical, lay & female) and native clergy from 1804 to 1904 (Church Missionary Society, 1905). |
| Custodial History | Presented to the CMS by Mrs F. M. Hensley, Sep 1959. Transferred on permanent loan to the Special Collections Department by the CMS in the 1980s. |