Princeton, NJ — A lifelong collection of rare Africana from the l9th and 20th centuries has been donated to Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) by an alumn, the Rev. Dr. Henry Hale Bucher, Jr., a Texas educator.
Currently chaplain and associate professor of humanities at Austin College, in Sherman, Texas, Bucher said he intentionally spent many decades collecting West African books, especially about Gabon, because "as a pastor and educator, I knew I would never have great financial wealth to give back to PTS, but I can contribute this once-in-a-lifetime gift to their scholarship assets."
The individual books have an appraised fair market value of $24,980, but as a complete collection their value is $34,980, according to R & A Petrilla, a professional appraisal firm specializing in African and African American books.
Allison Petrilla claims the real value is actually beyond price because "it would be nearly impossible to reassemble such a group of materials today." Many are written in African languages, including Mpongwe, Benga, Kele and Fang, and a large quantity are in their original wrappers, some cloth-bound or leather-bound.
"Since very little has been written on Gabon relative to other African nations, and since many of the items are rare and/or fragile, this collection of Gaboniana and related material is unique in this country," Robert Petrilla said. One hundred twenty-five items in the collection have individual values of between $50 and $1200.
Bucher's quest to intentionally compile an intact and representative collection required decades of traveling across Europe, Africa and the USA. "History is usually written by the colonizers or occupiers, so I concentrated on collecting and recording the history and perspectives of the indigenous people of Gabon, especially the Mpongwe up to l860," he said.
The difficulty of finding written records about Gabon in the l960s increased Bucher's commitment to create an intact collection of scholarly information, including the earliest grammars, dictionaries and Bible translations. They were gathered from across Africa, Europe and the USA over more than four decades.
The collection also includes items with no fair market value, but great scholarship value, such as copies of unpublished manuscripts. Future additions to the collection will include photographs and audio recordings of oral histories,and records of slave ships and trade.
"The real value of this donation is about creating a foundation for future research about Gabon," said Bucher, whose dissertation was written about "The Mpongwe of the Gabon Estuary: A History to l860".
Bucher has eight ancestors who also graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary, but he says he chose the institution for his donation because of their stewardship over other rare archives -- and because the Henry Luce III Library, which houses their rare books, has outstanding preservation and conservation facilities to keep the materials for future scholars. "I am grateful that part of the Library's mission is to archive special collections and letters of alums and missionaries," he said.
PTS already has one of the more outstanding U.S. collections of material about Rev. Dr. Robert Hamill Nassau. a Presbyterian medical missionary, PTS alumn, and native of nearby Lawrenceville, NJ, and of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who also worked in Gabon. Bucher's unpublished dissertation about the Mpongwe up through l860 details clan lineages of many individuals with whom Nassau and Schweitzer worked. It also draws and contrasts information from traders, ship captains, explorers and diplomats.
The child of Presbyterian missionaries Henry Hale Bucher Sr. (a PTS alumn) and Louise Scott Bucher, Henry Hale Bucher was born in Hainan, China. He grew up in Southeast Asia with three siblings. His family was among many missionaries rescued from a Japanese concentration camp immediately before the internee's execution (ordered by military headquarters in Tokyo) at Los Banos on the Philippine Islands in l945.
After graduating from the American University of Beirut (BA) and PTS , Bucher Jr. completed a MA and Ph.D. in Comparative World History (Africa and the Middle East) at University of Wisconsin - Madison. During this time he spent several years living in Gabon, first as a Frontier Intern in Mission working under the newly independent Gabon Evangelical church, co-sponsored by the Presbyterian Church, the Paris Mission Society, and the World Student Christian Federation, and later under a Fulbright-Hays grant for research in Gabon. Bucher's work put him in frequent touch with Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who was working out of the hospital founded by Presbyterian missionary Dr. Robert Hamill Nassau.
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Bucher also worked on the staff of the National Council of Churches (l965-l969) and has also served the national Presbyterian Church USA in various capacities, His work as a BiNational Servant of the Presbyterian Church has involved him not just in Africa and the Middle East but also in Latin America.
Bucher authored the Middle East edition of the Third World Series of textbooks for high school students, and continues to lecture widely about the Middle East, West Africa, and issues of peace on earth and peace with earth.
Bucher's students often hear him say: "We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give." Through his donated archives Bucher says he hopes future Gabonese and Gabonologists will increase their knowledge of and respect for African lives, culture and contributions to the world.
