Publisher's Synopsis
David Rood is a descendant and namesake of the one about whom he writes. The author's meticulous archival research uncovers the long and faithful ministry (1848-1888) of a little known, and never-before written-about, American Board missionary, in Natal. The Reverend David Rood (1818-1891) is the founder of Adams College (est. 1853), education and spiritual font of many of southern Africa's most prominent black nationalists (Lembede, Matthews, Buthelezi, Nkomo and Khama), four of whom served as president of the African National Congress (Dube, Seme, Gumede and Luthuli). The book expands from biography to a prominent mission's history that began in 1835, and further, to a country's prenatal history. Though biographical and missiological, the text above all is 'relational' in that it emphasizes the intricate web of relationships, horizontal and lateral, familial and ecclesiastical, that linked north Americans to each other and to southern Africans thus making his text a chronicle of the ties that bound people together to contribute substantively to southern Africa's current modern democratic dispensation.
