David Livingstone

1813-1873

Livingstone was a Scottish missionary and one of the greatest European explorers of Africa, whose opening up the interior of the continent contributed to the 'Scramble for Africa'.

David Livingstone was born at Blantyre, south of Glasgow, Scotland on March 19, 1813. At 10, he began working in the local cotton mill, with school lessons in the evenings. His father held to the belief that religion and science didn’t mix and it wasn’t until Dr. Gutzlaff’s letter was read in their church which told of a need for medical missionaries that his dad’s heart opened to the idea.  It’s also when David gave his heart to Jesus when he saw that his love for science could be reconciled with Christianity. In 1836, he began studying medicine and theology in Glasgow and decided to become a missionary doctor. In 1841, he was posted by the London Missionary Society to the edge of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. In 1845, he married Mary Moffat, daughter of a fellow missionary.  She had been in Africa since she was 4-years-old.  They eventually had six children. Mary & the children didn’t always live with David because of the dangers he encountered in his travels.  For some of that time, they lived with Mary’s parents in a mission station and then for several years, they went to live in Scotland with David’s family.  The last six months of that tenure, Mary left the children with David’s parents and went to live with a friend because she didn’t get along with his family.  

Livingstone was convinced his mission to reach new peoples in the interior of Africa and introduce them to Christianity was God’s plan; he eventually became passionate about freeing slaves when he saw the horrible devastation in the villages he came upon. It was this which inspired his explorations. In 1849 and 1851, he travelled across the Kalahari, on the second trip sighting the upper Zambezi River. In 1852, he began a four year expedition to find a route from the upper Zambezi to the coast. This filled huge gaps in western knowledge of central and southern Africa. In 1855, Livingstone discovered a spectacular waterfall which he named 'Victoria Falls' after Queen Victoria. He reached the mouth of the Zambezi on the Indian Ocean in May 1856, becoming the first European to cross the width of southern Africa.  He traveled over one-third of the continent of Africa in his lifetime. In his travels, he wrote detailed directions in his journal to each area he visited, where to find water, sketches of plants and animals he found.  He was once mauled by a lion which broke his arm and shook him in the air before the natives were able to kill it.  

Returning to Britain, where he was now a national hero, Livingstone did many speaking tours and published his best-selling 'Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa' (1857). He left for Africa again in 1858, and for the next five years carried out official explorations of eastern and central Africa for the British government, ending his alliance with the London Missionary Society, although his heart was still to win people to Christ. His wife died of malaria in 1862 which was a bitter blow.  His greatest regret was not spending more time with his family. 

At home, Livingstone publicized the horrors of the slave trade, securing private support for another expedition to central Africa, searching for the Nile's source and reporting further on slavery. This expedition lasted from 1866 until Livingstone's death in 1873. After nothing was heard from him for many months, Henry Stanley, an explorer and journalist, set out to find Livingstone. This resulted in their meeting near Lake Tanganyika in October 1871 during which Stanley uttered the famous phrase: 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?' With new supplies from Stanley, Livingstone continued his efforts to find the source of the Nile. His health had been poor for many years and he died on May 1, 1873. His three loyal African friends buried his heart under a mvula tree in Africa and took his body back to England where it was buried in Westminster Abbey.