Carl Henry Clerk (4 January 1895 – 28 May 1982) was a Ghanaian agricultural educationist, administrator, journalist, editor and church minister who was elected the fourth Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast, assuming the role of chief ecclesial officer of the national church from 1950 to 1954. Between 1960 and 1963, he was also the Editor of the Christian Messenger, established by the Basel Mission in 1883, as the newspaper of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana.
Early life and family
Carl Henry Clerk was born at Aburi, about forty-five minutes north-east of the capital city, Accra, on 4 January 1895. He was born in the home of his paternal grandfather, Alexander Worthy Clerk (1820–1906). His father was Nicholas Timothy Clerk (1862–1961), a Basel-trained theologian and missionary, was the first Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast from 1918 to 1932 and a founding father of the all boys’ boarding high school, the Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School, established in 1938. His mother, Anna Alice Meyer (1873–1934) was of Ga-Danish descent.
According to the Swiss German church historian and theologian, Hans Werner Debrunner, Carl Clerk's father, Nicholas Timothy Clerk, contemplated sending his young son to (Germany) in 1899 so he could receive well-rounded training in his formative years. N. T. Clerk was "worried about the possible effect of unsettled, isolated life confined to the interior" of the hinterlands, on his son's upbringing and development. Besides, Clerk wanted his son "to be a missionary or an engineer in the service of the mission." However, his Basel Mission colleagues strongly discouraged him, with the advice, "the best Christian education was the one given to a child by his own Christian parents." C.H. Clerk's paternal grandfather, Alexander Worthy Clerk, a Jamaican Moravian missionary arrived in the Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg, now the suburb of Osu, in Accra, Gold Coast in 1843, as part of the original group of 24 West Indian missionaries who worked under the auspices of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society of Basel, Switzerland. A.W. Clerk was a pioneer of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and a leader in education in colonial Ghana, establishing a boarding middle school, the Salem School in 1843. His paternal grandmother, Pauline Hesse (1831–1909) was from the Gold Coast, and was of Danish, German and Ga heritage. His grandaunt was Regina Hesse (1832 ─ 1898), a pioneer educator and school principal.
A third generation member of the historically notable Clerk family, Carl Clerk had 8 siblings. His younger brother, Theodore S. Clerk (1909–1965) was the first Ghanaian architect who planned and developed the port city of Tema. His younger sisters were Jane E. Clerk (1904–1999), a pioneer woman education administrator and Matilda J. Clerk (1916–1984), the second Ghanaian woman to become a physician and the first Ghanaian woman in any field to win an academic merit scholarship for university education abroad. His maternal uncle was Emmanuel Charles Quist (1880–1959), a barrister and judge who became the first African President of the Legislative Council from 1949 to 1951, Speaker of the National Assembly of the Gold Coast from 1951 to 1957, and Speaker of the National Assembly of Ghana from March 1957 to November 1957.