Wesley L. Sadler Literacy Collection

Rev. Wesley Leonadis Sadler Jr. was a Lutheran clergyman, African missionary, and linguist. Serving over thirty-seven years as a missionary, he is credited with his work in Liberia, where he wrote the Loma language in print and translated the gospels into Loma. He was also the Director of the Language, Literacy, Literary Program at United Lutheran Church of American, Liberia from 1955-1958 and director of the African Writing Center, North Rhodesia from 1959-1961.

Sadler was born on November 27, 1909 in Baltimore, Maryland to W.L. Sadler and Elsie Anna (Reinke). He received a B.A. from Washington College in 1935; a B.D. from Gettysburg Seminary in 1940; a M.A. from Hartford Seminary in 1940; a Ph.D. from Hartford Seminary in 1949, and an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature from Washington College in 1970.

He was ordained by the Maryland Synod in 1940, going on to serve as a foreign missionary for thirty-seven years in Liberia, Cameroon, Togo, Ghana, North and South Rhodesia (now Zambia), the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Dahomey (now part of Benin), and Tanganyika (now Tanzania).

Sadler Missions Timeline:

1941-1959: Monrovia, Libera

1959-1963: Kitwe, North Rhodesia (now Zambia)

1965-1969: Tanzania (assigned by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania as Literature Secretary)

1970-1973: Papua New Guinea (on loan to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod)

1974-1977: Sumatra, Indonesia

Sadler studied linguistics, cultural anthropology, and the Christian approach to the African people under British linguist, Dr. Edwin W. Smith at the Hartford Seminary Foundation. He also published a vast amount of literature, especially textbooks for foreigners who needed to speak and write in the languages of the natives. He also produced a Loma dictionary, basic primers and handbooks, articles on fables, medical and scientific material, social issues, vernacular language news sheets, and a weekly newspaper.

Sadler was married to Roslyn Sadler, who played a significant part in his ministry. She was born and Boston and moved to Guantanamo, Cuba when her father got a new job building sugar mills. She was raised in Cuba until she was eighteen, when she moved back to Massachusetts to attend boarding school.

With a love for fashion and a dream of becoming a costume designer for theater products, Roslyn moved to New York City and trained at the Traphagen School of Fashion Design. She met her soon-to-be husband in Guantanamo at the age of sixteen and married him five years later at the age of twenty-one.

In addition to being a wife and mother to two sons, Byron and Roy, she was also a typist, artist, builder, engineer, medic, tailor, barber, proofreader, mimeographist, and teacher. She provided more than one thousand pen and ink drawings which illustrated the texts and primers that Sadler produced. She became an author after finding a love to share her experiences living abroad and has written many books, such as Her Emblem, a Suitcase, an autobiography and Saada His Story a biography of her husband.

The Sadlers retired to Corvallis Oregon after their final assignment ended in Sumatra in 1977. Wesley continued to write and teach until his death in 1994. Roslyn authored two books during retirement: Her Emblem, a Suitcase, an autobiography and Saada His Story a biography of her husband. She passed away peacefully on November 24, 2018 at the age of 100.