Jean Pierre Pellissier

Who was Jean Pierre Pellissier?

Jean Pierre Pellissier was a missionary from the Paris Mission Society to Southern Africa. He arrived in Cape Town on 5 September 1831, where he stayed at Wamakersvallei for two months, to learn Dutch, and from where he departed to Kuruman to do mission work among the Tswana people. Local infighting between rival tribes caused him to move to the area north of the Orange River in 1833, to a site where the London Mission Society had an unsuccessful attempt to start a mission station among the Khoi people. He later named the mission station Bethulie. The land of the mission station was transferred to the Paris Mission Society in 1836. Besides his mission work, Pellissier made a great contribution towards practical education and medicine among the local people. This resulted into one of the best-developed mission stations in southern Africa beyond the Orange River for that period. In 1861 he was officially acknowledged as a medical practitioner by the local government of the Orange Free State.