Hendrik Vroom
Gold coast merchant
Hendrik Vroom CMG (20 May 1850 – 13 January 1902) was a Gold Coast Euro-African merchant and government official on the Gold Coast. Vroom was known as a strong supporter of the Wesleyan Methodist Church and lived in Bridge House, Elmina, on the corner of Liverpool Street and opposite Elmina Castle, from March 1895 until his death in 1902.
Biography
Hendrik Vroom was born in Elmina, Dutch Gold Coast, to Hendrik McCarthy Vroom and Anna Abakoema. Vroom was a pupil of the Dutch government school of Elmina and went on to have a career with the Dutch colonial government. He served as a pharmacy assistant to the Dutch officials in 1865, and was installed as a school teacher between 1866 and 1872. In the latter year, the Dutch left the Gold Coast, ceding their possessions to the British. Vroom easily adapted to the new situation, and served as a customs official in British service between 1872 and 1880.
Vroom was then installed as District Commissioner at Prampram, which was a rare honour for a mulatto man. He served at Prampram until 1888, and went on to serve as District Commissioner in Dixcove and Sekondi (1888 – 1889), Eastern Wassa (1889 – 1893), Elmina (1893 – 1896), and Tarkwa (1896 – 1901). He also was Travelling Commissioner to Asante between 1894 and 1896, where he was instrumental in the subjugation of the Asante during the Fourth Anglo-Ashanti War.
“Hendrik Vroom” enters the record as gold coast merchant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hendrik, Vroom and Gold can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hendrik Vroom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.