Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein was born in the Gold Coast in 1717, although the specific location and date of his birth are uncertain. His path to becoming a writer, poet, and missionary began when he was sold into slavery at the age of seven, a common practice at the time. According to blackpast.org, Jacobus Capitein was sold to a sea captain named Arnold Steenhard, who later gave him to his buddy and slave broker, Jacob van Gogh, as a present. He spent around two years with his master in the Dutch Fort of Elmina in Ghana before departing for Holland in 1728.
When he arrived in the Netherlands, he was released shortly after the country's official declaration of the abolition of slavery. He subsequently began to learn Dutch, which enabled him to begin missionary work in The Hague. Jacobus Capitein is claimed to have attended the local Reformed Church's catechism class in The Hague, where he was later baptized. After a while, he announced his decision to become a missionary in Africa, with the help of his master, Van Gogh, who helped him receive an education.
Jacobus Capitein enrolled at the University of Leiden in 1737 to study theology, which he would subsequently use in his missionary efforts. He produced a dissertation defending slavery on theological and Christian grounds before graduating from university in 1742. This drew him great attention and admiration from theologians and slave traffickers at the time, despite the fact that slavery is still illegal today.
Jacobus Capitein later became the Dutch Reformed Church's first Black minister. He later took a ship to return to Elmina, which is now in Ghana's Central Region, where he officially began his missionary work after learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
As part of his missionary work with the local community in Elmina, Capitein translated the Bible from Dutch into the Fanti tongue. He also attempted to resurrect a Dutch-founded religious school for mixed-race [mullato] youngsters, where he translated religious books into Fanti for comprehension. Despite a few achievements upon his return home, a lack of support from the West Indian Trading Company and his church, Classis in Holland, impeded his progress and eventually put him in debt when he borrowed huge sums of money from creditors to help with his work. On February 1, 1747, Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein died. He was thirty years old.
