Hesse family
The Hesse family (/ˈhɛsə/) is a Ghanaian family of Dano-German origins. The progenitor of the family was Dr. Lebrecht Wilhelm Hesse, a German medical doctor and a subject of the Danish Crown under King Christian VII. Hesse was an employee of the Danish colonial administration. After qualifying in medicine and surgery, he sailed to the Gold Coast as a young bachelor in the late 1700s to treat chaplains from the Church of Denmark and its latter affiliate, the Danish Missionary Society, civil servants and garrison soldiers stationed at the Christiansborg Castle, now called the Osu Castle. He married a local Ga woman, Lamiorkai, from Osu Amantra in Accra.
| Hesse family | |
|---|---|
| Current region | Accra, Ghana |
| Place of origin | |
| Founded | Arrival on the Gold Coast 18th century, Osu, Accra |
| Founder | Lebrecht Wilhelm Hesse |
| Members |
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| Connected members |
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| Connected families | Clerk family |
| Distinctions |
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| Traditions | Presbyterian |
During the nineteenth century, the Euro-Ga descendants of Dr. L. W. Hesse were influential in commerce in the Gold Coast colony. Family members later branched into other occupations, becoming bureaucrats and ministers. Additionally, the Hesse family is directly related to the Clerk family through Dr. Hesse's granddaughter, Pauline Hesse (1831–1909), a trader who was married to Alexander Worthy Clerk (1820–1906), a Jamaican Moravian teacher. Clerk was among 24 individuals from the West Indies recruited by the Basel Mission of Switzerland in 1843 and sent to Ghana to establish Protestant churches and schools.