Robert Morrison

Robert Morrison (, 1782 in Bullers Green , near Morpeth , Northumberland ; died August 1 , 1834 in Canton ; buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery In Macau ) was a Scottish missionary, the first Protestant Missionary in China . He married Mary Morton on February 20th, 1809. They had children James Morrison (5th March, 1811, died on the same day), Rebecca Morrison (July, 1812), and John Robert Morrison (17th April, 1814). Mary Morton died in 1821 . In November 1824 , he married Eliza Armstrong , with whom he had five more children.

EARLY LIFE

Son of James Morrison, an active member of Scottish Presbyterian Church . In 1796 , He followed his uncle James Nicholson into appenticeship and joined the Presbyterian church in 1798 . He wanted to become a missionary and in 1801 , he started learning Latin, Greek and Hebrew in private but his parents were opposed to the idea. In 1803 he entered Hoxton Academy in London and was trained as congregational minister.

PREPARING TO BE A MISSIONARY

After his mother's death in 1804 , he joined the London Missionary Society . The next year, he went to Mr. Bogue's Academy in Gosport for furthur training. Meanwhile he was chosen to be a missionary in China . He returned to London and studied medicine with Dr. Blair at St. Bartholemews Hospital , and Astronomy with Dr. Hutton at the Greenwich Observatory . He learnt the Chinese Language from a student called Yong Sam-tak in Canton City . It was thought that they did not get on well together. They also studied an early Chinese translation of Gospels named ''Evangelia Quatuor Sinice'' which was probably written by the Jesuit .

JOURNEY TO CHINA

He became a minister in London on 8th January 1807 and was ready to go to China.
The fact that the East India Company carried no missionary and that there were no other ships available that were bound for China, forced him to stop first in New York on 20th April , 1807. On 12th May , 1807, he boarded a second ship called Trident, bound for Macao .

Trident arrived in Macao on 4th September , 1807. Immediately George Thomas Staunton discouraged him on the idea of being a missionary in China. On 7th September , 1807 he was expelled from Catholic Macao and went to the Thirteen Factories outside Canton City . He tried to adapt to Chinese customs but failed. He fell ill and returned to Macao on 1st June 1808 . Fortunately he had mastered the Chinese dialects during this period, both Mandarin and Cantonese.

In 1809 , he met Mary Morton and soon married her on 20th February 1809. He returned to Canton alone since foreign women were not allowed to stay in Canton.

He took the post of Chinese Secretary and Translator to the British Factory by the East India Company in 1809 and took up legitimate residency in Canton.

Morrison produced a Chinese translation of the Bible . He also compiled a Chinese dictionary for the use of westerners. The Bible translation took twelve years and the compilation of the dictionary, sixteen years.

Due to imperial edicts against the learning of Chinese by non-Chinese as well as the printing of books on Christianity in Chinese, Morrison and his collaborator William Milne moved to Malacca , Malaya (both now in Malaysia ) and established a printing press. They also established a school for Chinese and Malay children in 1818 . The school, named Ying Wa College , was moved to Hong Kong around 1843 after the territory became a British Possession . The institution exists today in Hong Kong as a secondary school for boys.

SEE ALSO

Catholic missionaries in China