Hannah Marshman
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Hannah Marshman (Born May 13, 1767, Bristol - Died March 5, 1847, Serampore, India) was a missionary.
In 1791 Hannah Shepherd married Joshua Marshman. She was the daughter of Mr. J. Sheppard and grand-daughter of the Rev. Mr. Clarke, of Frome, Somerset, pastor of a Church in Brotherton. Her mother died when she was eight.
In 1794 the married young couple moved from Westbury Leigh in Wiltshire to Bristol, where they joined the Broadmead Baptist Church. The couple were to eventually have 12 children; of these only five lived longer than their mother.
Hannah is considered to be the first woman missionary in India.
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[edit] Leaving for India
On May 29, 1799, Hannah and Joshua, and their then 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 October 13, 1799. They had chosen to land here because the East India Company was still hostile to missionaries, they settled in the Danish colony at Serampore and were joined there by William Carey on 10 January 1800.
[edit] The missionary settlement
On 1 May 1800, Joshua and Hannah Marshman opened two boarding schools at Serampore. The two schools became the most popular in the Presidency and their son John Clark Marshman received his education from his parents. He was part of the growing mission family, eating at the communal table and joining with other children in mission life. As with all other mission family members he was encouraged to become a fluent Bengali speaker.
Meanwhile, the Missionary Society had begun sending more missionaries to India. The first to arrive was John Fountain, who arrived in Mudnabatty and began a teaching school. He was followed by William Ward, a printer; David Brunsdon, one of Marshman's students; and William Grant, who died three weeks after his arrival.
The spirit of the early community's unity was somewhat broken when some new missionaries arrived and who were not willing to live in the communal fashion that had developed. One missionary even went as far as to demand, "...a separate house, stable and servants." There were also other differences, as the new missionaries found their seniors - particularly Joshua Marshman, to be somewhat dictatorial, assigning them duties which were not to their liking.
In 1800,when she first met them, Marshman was appalled by the neglect with the way in which William Carey looked after his four boys; aged 4, 7, 12 and 15, they were unmannered, undisciplined, and even uneducated. Carey had not spoiled, but rather simply ignored them. Marshman, her husband and their friend the printer William Ward, took the boys in tow. Together they shaped the boys as Carey pampered his botanical specimens, performed his many missionary tasks and journeyed into Calcutta to teach at Fort William College. They offered the boys structure, instruction and companionship. To their credit - and little to Carey's - all four boys went on to useful careers.
At one point Hannah wrote about Carey, "The good man saw and lamented the evil but was too mild to apply an effectual remedy."
[edit] Serampore College and the Serampore Girls' School
On the 5 July 1818, William Carey, Joshua Marshman and William Ward issued a prospectus (written by Marshman) for a proposed new "College for the instruction of Asiatic, Christian, and other youth in Eastern literature and European science". Thus was born Serampore College - which still continues to this day.
Hannah herself went onto to found the local girls' school.
[edit] Her death
Her obituary in the Bengal Obituary (1848) said:
- "Her removal had been expected for some time; more than once during the last twelve months it was thought her end was at hand. Her's [sic] was a gradual decay; at intervals she rallied but all could see she was slowly sinking into her rest. The delightful nature of religion was beautifully exemplified in her experience when at the near approach of death. Hers was a settled and well-grounded hope, and she realized in her last moments the enjoyment to be derived from religion.
- On the 2 March a sudden change had taken place—death had evidently put his seal upon her. Mr. Denham was summoned to her bedside, and found her calm; all her mental powers unimpaired. She addressed him and said she would not long continue a tenant of this world, and then spoke of her trust in the Saviour. She referred with evident delight to the period when she had been brought to a sense of her lost condition, and looked back upon her thoughts and feelings then. Mr. Denham read with her the 43d Psalm, to each verse of which she responded.
- At 5pm when Mr. Denham again saw her she was in deep thought; her mind seemed to be in repose. Upon noticing her visitor she addressed him, and uttered several stanzas which, as she informed her daughter, she had committed to memory before she was eighteen years of age. To this period her thoughts seem constantly to be turning; it was then, she said, that Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was so useful to her.
- To a question from her daughter, as to whether she had any fears, she energetically answered—"no fears, child, no fears; has He not said that He will save to the uttermost those that come unto him, and will not cast away any?" And then turning to Mr. Denham, she added, "should you speak of me after my death speak to the people and tell them, He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of may waters," she then begged him to read the part where Bunyan describes the pilgrims as having just escaped from drowning in the river Jordan.
- The time, the circumstances seemed all to be realized in her case. "I wish myself among them," she repeated with a great deal of feeling and energy. The words of Steadfast seemed to interest her much, and when the reader came to the part where a change was manifested in the appearance of Steadfast, a brightness seemed to spread itself over her countenance; the reader could not proceed and stopped; her spirit had fled, death had taken possession of her without any of her friends perceiving it; she died on the bosom of her daughter.
- The deceased had nearly completed her eightieth year and nearly the forty-eighth year of her residence in the country, she was one of that small and devoted band that formed the Baptist Mission in India, and was a Member of the Church which was commenced at Serampore in the year 1804. In her removal the last link of that chain which connected the latter Missionaries with the former brethren has been broken."
[edit] Her memorial
The following Inscription to her memory is placed in the Mission Chapel at Serampore:—
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- In Memory of Hannah Marshman, widow of Joshua Marshman, D. D. the last surviving Member of the Mission Family at Serampore, she arrived in this settlement in October 1799, and opened a seminary to aid in the support of the Mission in May 1800, after having consecrated her life and property to the promotion of this sacred cause and exhibited an example of humble piety and energetic benevolence for forty-seven years. She was removed to her eternal rest at the age of eighty, March 5, 1847.
[edit] Modern descendants
The late architect Arthur Marshman is a descendant of Hannah Marshman.
