Amos Sutton

Amos Sutton (1802 in Sevenoaks in Kent – 17 August 1854 in Cuttack, Odisha) was an English General Baptist missionary to Odisha, India, and hymn writer.

He published the first English grammar of the Odia language (1831), a History (1839), and Geography (1840), then the first dictionary of the Odia language (1841-3). and translated the Bible into the Odia language.

He also composed a hymn to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne": "Hail, sweetest, dearest tie." and wrote a History of the mission to Orissa: the site of the temple of Juggernaut 1835.

At the age of 21, he was recruited by General Baptist Foreign Missionary Society for missionary service. He is trained for the ministry under J.G. Pike, founder of the Connexion's Missionary Society in Derby. After a brief period in home ministry, he was sent as a missionary to India in 1824 by Baptist Missionary Society, two years after William Bampton and James Peggs, the first two Baptist missionaries, had entered Odisha. Sutton along with his wife Charlotte Sutton (née Charlotte Collins) sailed to Calcutta (present Kolkata) and joined the missionary work at station Cuttack on 11 March 1825. Soon after their arrival to his mission station, his first wife Charlotte died due to sickness at Puri, Odisha; later, he married James Coleman, second wife and an American Baptist missionary widow.

The missionary began the evangelism and recorded the first Odia conversion in 1828. By 1841, he trained three Odia evangelists at Cuttack. By 1846, when the students increased to eight, he formalised the class as the Cuttack Mission Academy. By 1805, Baptist missionary society and later Amos Sutton under the auspices of Serampore Trio -- William Carey, Joshua Marshman, and William Ward attempted to preach Telugu-speaking people in northernmost parts of present Andhra Pradesh—adjoining areas to Odisha like Chicacole (present Srikakulam) and Vizagapatnam (present Vizag or Visakhapatnam). Baptist missionary attempts and Amos Sutton objectives to evangelize Telugus failed and missionaries didn't venture the Telugu regions again, confining themselves to Odia speaking districts.

...
Wikipedia