William Hopkins Pearce

William Hopkins Pearce (1794-1840) was the son of Samuel Pearce (see above). W. H Pearce was trained as a printer at the Clarendon Press at Oxford before arriving in India as a BMS missionary in 1817 to join William Ward at the Serampore Press. Before he left for India, however, he joined with William Johns (see above) in publishing the first tract in England on the subject of the sati [suttee], titled A Collection of Facts and opinions relative to the Burning of Widows with the dead bodies of their husbands, and to other destructive customs prevalent in British India (1816). In 1818 he joined William Yates and the younger group at Calcutta, where he worked with the Calcutta Education Press and the Baptist Mission Press until his death. He served for a time as pastor of the Baptist church at South Colings, and was a leader in the area of native female education in India. He authored a Bengali textbook titled Geography. See Cox, History, 2:286-293; The Bengal Obituary (Calcutta: Holmes and Co.; London: W. Thacker & Co., 1851), 254.