14 paper album leaves (9 blank). With 25 mounted and five loosely inserted original gelatin silver photographs (3 color). Larger photos ca. 9,1x13,8 cm (3 ½ x 5 ½ in), smaller ones ca. 5,6x8,3 cm (2 ¼ x 3 ¼ in), and the rest ca. 11,5x7 (4 ½ x 2 ¾ in). With two newspaper clippings, including the color map of “Africa. Southern Part” and an article “Golden Weds” about two missionaries (Mr. and Mrs. Crandall) from Quessua. Most photos with period white ink captions (English) on the mounts and blue/black ink captions on the verso; at least five photos dated (three in negative; two on verso). Period brown cloth binding fastened with a string; with gilt-lettered generic title “Photographs” and blind-tooled ornaments on the front board. Several photos with mild silvering, but overall a very good album with strong, interesting photos.

Historically significant collection of original photos, illustrating the early activities of the Quessua Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Angola during Portuguese colonial rule.

The Quessua Mission, founded in 1885 by Bishop William Taylor, was one of the earliest Methodist Episcopal Church stations in Africa. It was located on the Angolan high plateau, 400 kilometers from Luanda, and served 3,000 people with a church, hospital, three elementary schools, and a printing press. During the Angolan uprising of 1961, most of the missionaries were jailed or expelled by the Portuguese authorities on terrorism charges and were not allowed to return until 1974. The Quessua Mission was destroyed during Angola’s civil war but was eventually rebuilt in the mid-2000s.

The album contains 30 rare, early photographs of the Quessua Mission, primarily taken in the 1940s-1950s, before Angola’s War of Independence. As follows from the captions, the compiler was an American female missionary, possibly “Pearlie,” a local elementary school teacher from Dallas, Oregon.

Five well-executed photos document mission facilities, including a church (with hundreds of locals gathered outside), school (showing an African assistant instructing children), traditional grass huts, houses under construction, and a mission playhouse.

About ten thoroughly captioned images are individual and group portraits of American missionaries (including the compiler) and their children posing in boats, bringing flowers to missionaries’ graves, bidding farewell to their pastor, etc. Among the identified missionaries are Dr. and Mrs. Alexander H. Kemp, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Withey, Violet Crandall, Cilicia Cross, Ingle Johnson, and Florinda Bessa.

The other photographs mostly show natives “hoeing,” “boys doing calisthenics,” “a leopard killed near our mission,” “Miss Caffray, the visiting evangelist, in a rickshaw or bush car,” “a bible student,” “a former schoolgirl and her daughter,” “the carpenter’s kids,” “old wood carver, tailor + his girl,” “girls watching the boys’ open-air program,” “500 kids at our mission,” “village children near Malange, Angola,” etc.

There are also three interesting color photos (dated 1964) taken during the Angolan War of Independence, showing African women “stirring the cassava mush for supper,” “boarding schoolgirls pounding & winnowing their bean crop,” and a “Chapel at the Girls’ School.”

Overall, historically important collection, documenting the early activities of one of the first missions in Africa.