William Carey

Born on 17 August 1761 in Pury End, Northamptonshire, William Carey became a founding member and pioneer missionary of what is now BMS World Mission.

Apprenticed as a cordwainer and later working as a shoemaker, he succeeded in learning Greek and was eventually appointed as a village schoolmaster. He married Dorothy Plackett and they had seven children, although three of them did not survive beyond the age of five.

Working as a shoemaker then pastor in Northamptonshire, Carey wrote and published a pamphlet in 1792, ‘An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens’, surveying the countries of the world and calling Christians to mission.

This led, on 2 October 1792, to the formation of the ‘Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen’, later known as the Baptist Missionary Society. Carey, along with John Thomas, a doctor, volunteered to go to India as a missionary and arrived there in November 1793.

From this time until his death in India in 1834, Carey devoted himself to missionary work, Bible translation, campaigning against injustices and theological teaching. He has often been considered ‘the father of modern mission’.