John Biss

John Biss (d. 1807) and his wife and daughter were members of the Baptist church at Plymouth Dock under Isaiah Birt. Biss studied for the ministry under John Sutcliff at Olney. The Bisses, along with Joshua Rowe, Richard Mardon, William Moore, and their families, sailed from Bristol for Serampore (via America) in December 1803. Biss’s health deteriorated quickly upon his arrival in Bengal in 1804; he was forced to return to England, but never arrived, dying on board the Bremen in February 1807. Hannah Biss later married her fellow traveler William Moore (at that time a widower himself) in 1813. She died in 1843. See F. A. Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, from 1792 to 1842, 2 vols. (London: T. Ward, and G. and J. Dyer, 1842), 2:151, 2.168; “Sutcliff’s Academy at Olney,” Baptist Quarterly 4 (1928-1929), 277.