Missionaries of the World

Hannah Marshman was the First Woman Missionary in India born on 13th May 1767 at Bristol, England. She was the daughter of John Shepherd, a farmer and his wife Rachel and the granddaughter of John Clark, pastor of the Baptist church at Crockerton, Wiltshire. Her mother died when she was eight years old. In 1791 Hannah Shepherd married Joshua Marshman. Hannah Shephard was possessed in an eminent degree those qualities of heart and mind which fitted her to be a help-meet to her husband. Three years after her marriage, in 1794 they moved from Westbury Leigh in Wiltshire to Broadmead, Bristol. In Bristol, they joined the Broadmead Baptist Church. The couple had 12 children; of these only five lived longer than their father. Their youngest daughter Hannah married Henry Havelock, who became a British General in India and whose statue is in Trafalgar Square, London. Marshman On 29th May 1799, Hannah and Joshua Marshman and their two children set out from Portsmouth for India aboard...

Robert Moffat was a Scottish Congregationalist Pioneer Missionary to Africa and father-in-law of David Livingstone, born on 21st December 1795 in Ormiston, East Lothian in Scotland to poor parents. The educational advantages afforded him were limited, so, at a young age, he became an apprentice to learn gardening. Upon the completion of this apprenticeship, he moved to Cheshire in England to find an employment as a gardener where he was won to Christ through the efforts of the Wesleyan Methodists. In 1814, he was employed at West Hall High Legh in Cheshire and he experienced difficulties with his employer due to his Methodist sympathies. With an intense desire to serve the Lord burning within him, he attended a missionary conference being held in Manchester and there he felt the divine call to carry the Gospel to the heathen. For a short period, after having applied successfully to the London Missionary Society (LMS) to become an overseas missionary, he took an interim post as a farme...

Joshua Marshman, Missionary to India, born on 20th April 1768 in Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire, England. His father, John Marshman was a weaver, a man of fervent piety and his mother was a woman of superior mental gifts as well as of deep spirituality. At fifteen years old, a bookseller in Holborn, who had formerly resided in Westbury Leigh, proposed to John Marshman that his son should come to the metropolis and help in his shop. Joshua Marshman, who was passionately fond of reading, was now in a congenial atmosphere, but he soon found that his duties left him little leisure. In 1791, Joshua Marshman married Hannah Shephard who possessed in an eminent degree those qualities of heart and mind which fitted her to be a help-meet to her husband. Three years after his marriage, in 1794 they moved from Westbury Leigh in Wiltshire to Broadmead, Bristol. In Bristol, they joined the Broadmead Baptist Church and he accepted the position of master of a school in Broadmead, Bristol and here he taug...

William Ward an English pioneer Baptist missionary, author, printer and translator was born on 20th October 1769 at Derby in England. He lost his father while he was a child and the care of his upbringing fell to his mother. Since left from school, he was apprenticed to a Derby printer and bookseller Mr.Drewry, with whom he continued two years after the expiry of his indentures, assisting him to edit the Derby Mercury. He then moved to Stafford, where he assisted Joshua Drewry, a relative of his former master, to edit the Staffordshire Advertiser and in 1794, he proceeded to Hull, where he followed his business as a printer and was for some time editor of the Hull Advertiser. In the autumn of 1798, the baptist mission committee visited Ewood and he offered himself as a missionary, influenced perhaps by a remark made to him in 1793 by William Carey concerning the need for a printer in the Indian mission field. Ward Baptizing a Hindoo in Ganges In May 1799, William Ward sailed from...

Caleb Cook Baldwin was one of the first Presbyterian Missionaries to China, born in 1820 at Bloomfield, New Jersey, United States of America. Caleb Cook Baldwin studied at the district schools of that town, later entered Princeton Theological Seminary. A few years after his graduation, he married Harriet Fairchild. He was ordinated in 1848, he along with his wife, was sent to the Foochow post, the Southern East part of China with the American Board of Missions by the Presbyterian Church. He served as a missionary in China and he returned to America only three times, in 1859, 1871, 1885. In 1895, he came back to spend his last days near his old home at East Orange, New Jersey, where he died on 20th July 1911 due to heart failure. His monumental works were the Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Foochow Dialect (language) (with Robert S.Maclay) in 1870 and the Manual of the Foochow Dialect in 1871. In connection with his wife, he translated much of the Bibl...