THE LETTERS OF EMMA SARAH HAHN

xi + 489 pp.incl. index; contemporary b/w photographs and artwork; folding map and folding genealogical table in endpocket.

Pictorial boards with minor edge-wear. No inscriptions. 

Edited by Dorothy Guedes 

Annotations and Bibliographical Notes by Peter Rainer

Back cover:

In 1843, Emma Hone, a young English governess, was swept by evangelical enthusiasm into the African mission field. Waiting in Cape Town for a suitable posting, she met the charismatic Carl Hugo Hahn, a missionary of the Rhenish Mission Society, who was on the point of leaving for the interior of what is today Namibia to establish a station in that remote and inhospitable land. After only a few days' acquaintance and hardly speaking one another's languages, they married and travelled to Hereroland, where Emma was one of the first European women the people had seen. Devoted to one another and to their task, they lived there for thirty years facing isolation, danger and deprivation. With great fortitude, perseverance and hard labour both physical and spiritual, they achieved a significant missionary presence in the country and sufficient recognition in Europe to merit the interest of a German Prince and a Russian Archduchess...

This record of the pioneer times of the Rhenish Mission Society's activities in Namibia is supplemented by numerous footnotes and contemporary photographs and prints, and biographical details are provided on every traceable person mentioned in the letters."

Biographical information of the descendants of William Hone:

Emma Hone was the seventh child of William and Sarah. She was born on March 14, 1814 and died in 1880. She married Carl Hahn (1818 -1895) in Windhoek, South Africa in 1843. Emma left England for South Africa in early 1843, working as the Superintendent of the St Stephen's Lutheran Church mission school.

Carl was born in Latvia. He was a missionary of the Rhenish Missionary Society and arrived in South Africa in 1842. After marrying in 1843, Carl and Emma lived in Otjikango until 1853. From 1855 they settled in Otjimbingwe where Carl established a teacher training school.
Carl was said to be one of the most influential missionaries in Namibia in the 19th century. Not only did he resolve disputes between warring tribes, he contributed significantly to the Berlin Museum's collection of reptiles.

He is described as an important Otjiherero linguist and received an honorary PhD from the University of Leipzig in 1873. 

Emma and Carl lived in Gordon's Bay, Cape Province in a house called "Deville". She is buried with her husband at the cemetery of the German St Petri Congregation at Paarl near Cape Town.

http://thedescendantsofwilliamhone.blogspot.com/p/emma-hone.html