John Chamberlain 

John Chamberlain (1777-1821) was originally from Welton, Northamptonshire. He was baptized at Guilsborough in 1796. He spent a year at Olney with Sutcliff (1798), followed by pastoral training at Bristol Academy (1799-1802), during which time he kept a diary, which was later used extensively by William Yates in his Memoirs of Mr. John Chamberlain, Late Missionary in India (1824). Chamberlain met Hannah Smith, a member of Sutcliff’s church, during his year at Olney. She was born at Walgrave, in Northamptonshire, in 1779, where her father was a deacon in the Baptist church. They were married on 29 April 1802, and on 15 May they set sail for America and then India. Hannah Chamberlain died there on 14 December 1804. A second wife died in 1806, as well as his three children by 1812. He first worked in Catwa, supporting himself as a cloth merchant. He then opened northern India to the BMS, becoming the first Englishman to preach the Gospel in Delhi. On several occasions he was forced to return to Serampore, finally settling at Monghyr. He died after just three weeks at sea on his way to England in 1821. See Joshua Marshman’s “Account” of Mrs. Chamberlain’s death, as well as two letters by Hannah Chamberlain to John Sutcliff, in the BMS Periodical Accounts, 3:66-77 and 3:78-82; see also Ernest A. Payne, The First Generation: Early Leaders of the Baptist Missionary Society in England and India (London: Carey Press, [1936]). 90-96; F. A. Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, from 1792 to 1842, 2 vols. (London: T. Ward, and G. and J. Dyer, 1842), 1:105-136, 207; and William Yates, Memoirs of Mr. John Chamberlain, Late Missionary in India (Calcutta. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1824).