James Bannerman

James Bannerman

James Bannerman (12 March 1790 – 18 March 1858) was a lieutenant and acting governor of the Gold Coast (part of modern Ghana) from 4 December 1850 to 14 October 1851.

Life

James Bannerman was born a native of the Gold Coast in 1790 to a Fanti mother and a British father from Scotland, Colonel Henry Bannerman. Bannerman was educated in the Gold Coast and in Europe. Returning to the Gold Coast as a merchant, he was appointed a Justice of the Peace and was Civil Commandant of Christiansborg, Accra, from 1850 to 1857. He succeeded Governor William Winniett, who had died, as Lieutenant-Governor of the colony, and helped to introduce the Legislative Council of the Gold Coast.

He married an Ashanti princess, Yaa Hom or Yeboah, daughter of Osei Bonsu who was taken prisoner at the Battle of Katamanso in 1826. Together they had six children including Charles (who in 1857 founded the Accra Herald, later called the West African Herald), Edmund and James Junior. Thomas Hutton-Mills, Sr., was a grandson, and Charles Edward Woolhouse Bannerman a great-grandson.

References

  1. ↑ "James Bannerman". African Lisbon Tour. 2020-12-13. Retrieved 2025-07-30.
  2. ↑ Hesse, Hermann W. von (8 April 2024). "More Than an Intermediary: James Bannerman and Colonial Space-Making on the Nineteenth-Century Gold Coast". African Studies Review. 67 (2): 396–415. doi:10.1017/asr.2024.20. ISSN 0002-0206.
  3. ↑ "Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade". enslaved.org. Retrieved 2025-07-27.
  4. ↑ "Bannerman, James". Encyclopaedia Africana. 2025-03-02. Retrieved 2025-07-27.
  5. 1 2 3 Michael R. Doortmont, The Pen-Pictures of Modern Africans and African Celebrities by Charles Francis Hutchison: A Collective Biography of Elite Society in the Gold Coast Colony, Brill, 2005, p. 118.
  6. ↑ Rich, Jeremy (December 8, 2011). "Bannerman, James" (PDF). projects.kora.matrix.msu.edu. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2024-05-22. Retrieved 2026-03-17.
  7. ↑ Dhyana Ziegler, Molefi K. Asante, Thunder and Silence: The Mass Media in Africa, Africa World Press, 1992, p. 12.