Dictionary of Indian Biography/Carey, Rev. Dr. William
CAREY, REV. DR. WILLIAM (1761–1834)
Missionary: born Aug. 17, 1761, in Northamptonshire: son of Edmund Carey, a village schoolmaster: apprenticed to a shoemaker at Hackleton: joined the congregation of Baptists in 1783, and at 22 was publicly baptized: studied Greek, Latin and Hebrew under great privations; had charge of a congregation at Leicester in 1789, and joined in forming a Baptist missionary society at Kettering, 1792: sent out as their first missionary to Bengal in 1794, lost all his property in the Hughli and was destitute in Calcutta. After cultivating in the Sundarbans, he became Superintendent of an indigo factory in the Malda district for 5 years, built a church there, and preached in the villages. Being prevented by the E. I. Co. from establishing a mission in British territory, he formed with others, in 1799, a missionary settlement at Serampur under the protection of the Danish Governor, Colonel Bie: there he first translated the Bible into Bengali and printed it, and it was afterwards translated into 26 languages. Carey also published dictionaries and many grammars of languages and other Indian works: edited the Ramayana and Roxburgh's Flora Medica. In 1801 he was appointed to be a Professor of Sanskrit, Bengali and Mahratti at the new College of Fort William, and in 1805 he founded the Bow Bazar Mission Chapel in Calcutta: in 1807 he was made D.D. by the Brown University in the United States. Notwithstanding official warnings against over-zeal his mission prospered, and many out-stations were established: he died at Serampur, June 9, 1834.