William Carey (17 August 1761 – 9 June 1834) was an English Baptist missionary and a Particular Baptist minister, known as the father of modern missions. Carey was one of the founders of the Baptist Missionary Society. As a missionary in the Danish colony, Serampore, India, he translated the Bible into Bengali, Sanskrit, and numerous other languages and dialects.
During the first year in Calcutta, the missionaries sought means to support themselves and a place to establish their mission. They also began to learn the Bengali language to communicate with the natives. Carey moved with his family north to Midnapore where Carey managed an indigo plant. Therehe completed the first revision of his Bengali New Testament and began formulating the principles upon which his missionary community would be formed.
From the printing press at the mission came translations of the Bible in Bengali, Sanskrit, and other major languages and dialects. Many of these languages had never been printed before; William Ward had to create punches for the type by hand. Carey had begun translating literature and sacred writings from the original Sanskrit into English to make them accessible to his own countryman. On 11 March 1812, a fire in the print shop caused £10,000 in damages and lost work. Amongst the losses were many irreplaceable manuscripts, including much of Carey’s translation of Sanskrit literature and a polyglot dictionary of Sanskrit and related languages, which would have been a seminal philological work had it been completed. However, the press itself and the punches were saved, and the mission was able to continue printing in six months. In Carey’s lifetime, the mission printed and distributed the Bible in whole or part in 44 languages and dialects.
In 1818, the mission founded Serampore College to train indigenous ministers for the growing church and to provide education in the arts and sciences to anyone regardless of caste or country. The King of Denmark granted a royal charter in 1827 that made the college a degree-granting institution, the first in Asia.[7] In 1820 Carey founded the Agri Horticultural Society of India at Alipore, Kolkata, supporting his enthusiasm for botany. The standard author abbreviation Carey is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.[8]
Andrew Fuller, who had been secretary of the Society in England, had died in 1815, and his successor, John Dyer, was a bureaucrat who attempted to reorganize the Society along business lines. Their differences proved to be irreconcilable, and Carey formally severed ties with the missionary society he had founded, leaving the mission property and moving onto the college grounds. He lived a quiet life until his death in 1834, revising his Bengali Bible, preaching, and teaching students. The couch on which he died, on 9 June 1834, is now housed at Regent’s Park College, the Baptist hall of the University of Oxford.
Carey has at least nine colleges named after him: William Carey Christian School (WCCS) in Sydney, NSW, William Carey International University in Pasadena, California, Carey Theological College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Carey Baptist College in Auckland, New Zealand, Carey Baptist Grammar School in Melbourne, Victoria, Carey College in Colombo, Sri Lanka and William Carey University, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. William Carey Academy of Chittagong, Bangladesh teaches both Bangladeshi and expatriate children, from Kindergarten to grade 12.
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