James Chater

James Chater (1779-1829), along with William Robinson, came to India as a BMS missionaries on board the Criterion in August 1806. The two men, however, were ordered to leave during a crackdown on missionary activity by the representatives of the East India Company. Chater, along with Richard Mardon, was commissioned to develop a mission in Burma in 1807, but Chater left that country in 1811, leaving the work with Felix Carey, who later turned it over to Adoniram Judson and the American Baptist Mission. In 1812, Chater settled in Columbo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where he remained until his death in 1829. See Brian Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792–1992 (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1992), 54-55, 168; P. B. Gravett, Over Three Hundred Years of God’s Grace: A Short History of Sutcliff Baptist Church (Olney: [n.p.], 1987), 27; and F. A. Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, from 1792 to 1842, 2 vols. (London: T. Ward, and G. and J. Dyer, 1842), 1:156, 167, 191-192, 202.