William Ward (missionary)

William Ward
Missionary to India
Born	20 October 1769 Derby, England
Died	7 March 1823 Serampore, India

William Ward (1769–1823) was an English pioneer Baptist missionary, author, printer and translator. On 10 May 1802 he was married at Serampore to the widow of John Fountain, another missionary, by whom he left two daughters.

Ward was born at Derby on 20 October 1769, and was the son of John Ward, a carpenter and builder of that town, and grandson of Thomas Ward, a farmer at Stretton, near Burton in Staffordshire. His father died while he was a child, and the care of his upbringing fell to his mother. He was placed with a schoolmaster named Mr Congreve, near Derby, and afterwards with another named Mr Breary.

On leaving school he was apprenticed to a Derby printer and bookseller Mr Drewry, with whom he continued two years after the expiry of his indentures, assisting him to edit the Derby Mercury. He then removed to Stafford, where he assisted Joshua Drewry, a relative of his former master, to edit the Staffordshire Advertiser and in either 1794 or 1795 proceeded to Hull, where he followed his business as a printer, and was for some time editor of the Hull Advertiser.

Ward early in life became an Anabaptist, and on 26 August 1796 he was baptised at Hull. Preaching constantly in the neighbouring villages, he became known as a man of promise, and, with the assistance of a member of the baptist community named Mr Fishwick, he proceeded in August 1797 to Ewood Hall, near Halifax in Yorkshire, the theological academy of John Fawcett (1740–1817), where he studied for a year and a half.

In the autumn of 1798, the baptist mission committee visited Ewood, and Ward offered himself as a missionary, influenced perhaps by a remark made to him in 1793 by William Carey concerning the need for a printer in the Indian mission field.

Ward sailed from England in the Criterion in May 1799, in company with Joshua Marshman. On arriving at Calcutta he was prevented from joining Carey by an order from the Government, and was thereby obliged to proceed to the Danish settlement of Serampore, where he was then joined by Carey.