B. G. (Benjamin Gottlieb) Kohlmeister

Benjamin Gottlieb Kohlmeister was a Moravian missionary and writer associated with Labrador in the early 1800s. He is best known as the co-author, with George Kmoch, of Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh, first published in 1814.

That book grew out of an expedition undertaken to explore the coast and visit Inuit communities in a region then little known to European readers. Because it combines travel narrative, observation, and missionary purpose, it has continued to interest readers of northern history and early Canadian exploration.

The catalog record attached to his work gives his dates as 1784–1874, but some biographical sources for Benjamin Gottlieb Kohlmeister refer to a different man of the same name, a Moravian missionary born in 1756 and died in 1844. Since the records are not fully consistent, it is safest to focus on the authorship and historical importance of the journal itself.