John Fountain

John Fountain (1766-1800)  joined the Baptist church at Eagle Street in London in 1794. In January 1796 Andrew Fuller and the BMS committee agreed to take him under the direction of the Society. That April he sailed on board the American ship Elizabeth, arriving in India on 16 September 1796. He applied himself to the language and eventually assisted in translation work at Mudnabatty, as well as preaching at Dinagepore and Rungpore and working with the school there. Fuller chastised him for his political outspokenness, but Carey consistently defended him. He moved with Carey to Kidderpore when Carey purchased a small factory there, but left in 1799 to help the new missionaries—Marshman, Ward, Brunsdon, and Grant—who had just arrived in Calcutta. When they decided to make Serampore the mission headquarters, he settled there in November and soon married a Miss Tidd of Oakham, who had arrived with the new missionaries. He decided to return to Dinagepore in the spring, but took ill and died in August 1800 at the age of 33. See Eagle Street Church Book, London, Vol. 1, 1737-1785 (MS., Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford) f. 133; W. H. Carey, ed. Oriental Christian Biography, Containing Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Christians who have Lived and Died in the East. 3 vols. (Calcutta: J. Thomas, Baptist Mission House, 1852), 3:332-336.