Daniel Lindley

Daniel Lindley (August 24, 1801 – September 3, 1880) was an American missionary in South Africa. He and his wife Lucy founded the Inanda Seminary School in 1869. Lindley was pastor to the first Dutch Reformed Church in the Orange Free State. He was a pastor to the Voortrekkers.

Description Lindley was born at Ten Mile Creek, Pennsylvania, on 24 August 1801. He was the eldest child of Jacob and Hannah Lindley. His father had founded Ohio University so not surprisingly Lindley was educated there and at the Union Seminary in Prince Edward, Virginia. In 1831 he was ordained by the Presbyterian Church. On 20 November 1834 he married Lucy Virginia Allen and they were sent by the American Board of Missions to South Africa.

When they arrived in Cape Town they still had to cover. Their journey in the company of Alexander Wilson, Henry Venable and their wives took a year by ox cart to get to Matabeleland. Lindley together with other missionaries were to work creating converts amongst the Matabele but their plan was thwarted by the fighting that was taking place between the Dutch and the Matebele. They had to retreat to Natal and from there they were driven away again by the fighting between the Boers and the Zulus. These institutions were successful, and amongst the first to be confirmed was Paul Kruger, who was to be the first president of South Africa.

At the Lindleys' retirement in 1873, Zulus and Boers expressed deep regard. The Lindleys retired to the United States in 1874. Lindley died on 3 September 1880 in Morristown, New Jersey. He was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in New York.

School for girls The Seminary. The building that Lindley first built is on the left. The later Edwards Hall is to the right with Lucy Lindley Hall in the background. In 1869 they realised that the Adams School at Adams Mission was successfully creating educated Africans but they had no prospect of finding an educated local wife. They said "who are they going to marry? – these naked girls". The couple realised this was a problem and founded a school for nineteen girls boarding at Inanda in 1869.

One of the Lindley daughters went on teach at the school but the Lindley family left in April 1873 leaving the organisation that they had established in the hands of the Reverend James Dube. Dube was the son of one of the first Christians in the area. Dube was to die in 1877 but not before he had fathered John Dube who was to found Ohlange High School and take a leading role in creating the African National Congress. Lindley left Inanda having created what would become Inanda Seminary School, the Seminary, a church and several schools based in native huts.