Richard Burton

Richard Burton (d. 1828) was originally a member of Joseph Ivimey’s congregation at Eagle Street, London. Burton was appointed as a BMS missionary in 1820 and sailed that year with Charles Evans (of the Pithay church in Bristol) to Sumatra  (both men had been Bristol Academy students). They were joined the next year by William Robinson (1784-1853) of Olney, who had been working in Java since 1812. Evans and Burton had been asked by Sir Thomas Raffles, then governor of Sumatra, to open a station at Fort Marlborough, assisted by Nathaniel Ward, William Ward’s nephew. Burton began his work in Sebolga, a Batta village in the bay of Tappanooli, learning the language and working with an orphan institution. During the insurrection in Sumatra in 1825, the Burtons, along with a number of girls from the orphanage, fled to Calcutta.  They then took over the mission at Digah, where Joshua Rowe had laboured, assisting now in the education of over 250 children. Burton’s wife died in 1826, and he followed not long afterwards, in September 1828. As Cox writes of Burton, “He was a diligent and faithful missionary, and he had many seals to his ministry among the European soldiers and others. He had applied himself zealously to the acquisition of the language, but he was not permitted to realise his devout expectations of labour and usefulness.”  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), 2:353; 1:416.