| Description | This collection comprises personal papers of Robert Henry Walker relating to his service as a CMS missionary, together with some papers of Walker family. It includes originals and copies of Robert Walker's letters to his family and friends, 1887-1903, some of his writings, including manuscripts of articles, and an English-Luganda vocabulary. The family papers include a diary, possibly of his sister, which records visits to Paris in the 1880s and 1890s, and correspondence between the family and E. S. Daniell about a proposed biography of Walker's life, 1946. The collection includes a small number of photographs, including a group of the first five women missionaries to Uganda and another of Daudi, Kabaka of Uganda, c 1900 |
| Administrative History | Robert Henry Walker (1857-1939), Archdeacon of Uganda was educated at Dedham School, and St John's College, Cambridge where he obtained his BA (Theology) in 1879. He was ordained a deacon in 1880 and a priest in 1881 and became curate of All Souls, Langham Place, London until 1887 when he was accepted as a CMS missionary. He served largely at Mengo, Uganda. In 1892 he was appointed Archdeacon of Uganda by Bishop Tucker and he was also Secretary of the Uganda Mission. He married Eleanor Barbour in 1910 and retired from missionary service in 1913. He translated Oxford Helps to Study of the Bible into Luganda.
Reference: Register of missionaries (clerical, lay & female) and native clergy from 1804 to 1904 (Church Missionary Society, 1905), and unpublished additions to this register in the CMS archives |
| Custodial History | The original provenance of this collection is unknown. It was transferred on permanent loan to the Special Collections Department by the CMS in the 1980s |