Joshua Marshman

Joshua Marshman
Christian missionary to India
Born	1768 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire, Great Britain
Died	1837 Serampore, Bengal, India

Joshua Marshman DD (1768–1837) was a Christian missionary in Bengal, India. His mission involved social reform and intellectual debate with educated Hindus such as Ram Mohan Roy.

Joshua Marshman was born in 1768 in Britain at Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire, Great Britain. Of his family little is known, except that they traced their descent from an officer in the Army of Cromwell, one of a band who, at the Restoration, relinquished, for conscience-sake, all views of worldly aggrandisement, and retired into the country to support himself by his own industry.

His father John passed the early part of his life at sea and was engaged in the Hind Sloop of War, commanded by Captain Bond at the Capture of Quebec. Shortly after this he returned to England and in 1764 married Mary Couzener. She was a descendant of a French family who had sought refuge in England following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; after his marriage he lived in Westbury Leigh and took up the trade of a weaver.

Marshman's family were poor and could give him little education, In 1791, Joshua married Hannah Marshman (née Shepherd) and in 1794 they moved from Westbury Leigh, a village in the parish of Westbury, Wiltshire, to Bristol. There they joined the Broadmead Baptist Church, and Marshman taught in a local charity school supported by the church. At this time he also studied at the Bristol Baptist College.

On 29 May 1799, Joshua, Hannah, and their two children set out from Portsmouth for India aboard the ship "Criterion". Although there was a threat of a French naval attack the family landed safely at the Danish settlement of Serampore, a few miles north of Calcutta, on 13 October 1799.

The couple had 12 children; of these only five lived longer than their father. Their youngest daughter Hannah married Henry Havelock, who became a British general in India, and whose statue is in Trafalgar Square, London.