Thomas Baker

Thomas Baker, the uncle of BMS missionary Nathaniel Ward, was a schoolmaster in John Street, Portwood, near Manchester. Had Baker been reading the Missionary Herald more closely, he would have seen that a letter from Ward had appeared in the magazine the previous year, the editor noting that “various circumstances have combined to render our intercourse with Mr. Ward, of Padang, very infrequent and precarious.” The BMS would not receive another letter from Ward until October 1844; the letter was dated 15 February 1844, from Pedang, Sumatra. He writes that although the Sumatran mission had been withdrawn by the BMS many years earlier, Ward had remained behind to pursue the language and produce on his own “an intelligible version of the scriptures, supporting [himself] by means of agriculture.” He writes that he now has a “copious dictionary of the language . . . and ample means” to complete a translation of the Bible. See Pigot and Slater’s Directory of Manchester and Salford, 3:144; Missionary Herald (March 1841), 142-143; (October 1844), 537-539.