Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Thoburn, James Mills

THOBURN, James Mills, M. E. bishop, b. in St. Clairsville, Ohio, 7 March, 1836. He was graduated at Alleghany college. Pa., in 1857, and began preaching in Ohio as a Methodist minister in the same year. In 1859 he went to India as a missionary, where he was stationed successively at Nynee Tal, Moradabad, Lucknow, and Calcutta.   He preached in both the native and European languages, and built the largest church in India. He was presiding elder of the Indian conference, preached for some time at Simla, the summer capital of India, and was for five years editor of the “Indian Witness.” In consequence of an injury that resulted from an accident, he returned to this country in 1886. At the general conference of the Methodist Episcopal church in New York city in 1888 he was elected missionary bishop of India and Malaysia. He has published “My Missionary Apprenticeship,” being a history of twenty-five years' experience in India (New York, 1884), and “Missionary Sermons” (1888).