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Early Asian Missions 1851-1856
The 1850s Missions to India, Burma, Siam, and China
More than seven decades ago, Elder Brigham H. Roberts, a well-known Latter-day Saint Church authority and historian, said concerning the LDS missionaries to India that "there is nothing more heroic in our Church annals than the labors and sufferings of these brethren of the mission to India."1 Considering the times in which Roberts lived and the knowledge he had of the trials and sufferings of the early members of the Church, this statement takes on great proportions.2
The mission to India began not in Utah, where Brigham Young had established the Saints, but in England. The need for missionaries in India was recognized when two persons in India, Private Thomas Metcalf of the British Army and William A. Sheppard of Calcutta, wrote asking for tracts, literature, and other information about the Church. Concurrent with these requests came word concerning missionary efforts of two sailors who, after being baptized in England on January 27, 1849, had undertaken a voyage that terminated at Calcutta, India. There they waited while their ship received needed repairs. These men, George Barber and Benjamin Richey, were the first known members of the Church to teach the restored gospel on Indian soil. While they were in Calcutta, they became acquainted with a Protestant group known as the Plymouth Brethren. Barber and Richey did their best to explain Mormonism and received a warm response from several members of the congregation. These sailors were not well-informed regarding doctrines of the Church, nor did they hold priesthood authority; for this reason, when they arrived back in England they asked Church authorities there to send someone to baptize several of the Plymouth Brethren.3
In response, Elder Joseph Richards was ordained, set apart, and sent to Calcutta by G. B. Wallace, a Church authority in England. Richards arrived at Calcutta in June 1851. He did not stay there long on this first visit, however, because he had obtained passage under contract as a sail maker and could not find a replacement when the ship sailed back to England. But while there he baptized the first Mormon converts of India, ordained several men to the priesthood, and established the "Wanderer's Branch."4
More than six months later, on December 25, 1851, Elder William Willes, Richards's replacement, arrived in Calcutta. He had been called by Lorenzo Snow, president of the Italian Mission, who felt it his prerogative to include India in his area of authority.5 Willes was called especially to go to Calcutta. Elder Snow sent another elder, Hugh Findlay, to Bombay at the same time.
Willes found only six members of the Church in Calcutta, and they were without leadership. Richards had returned to London, and Maurice White, who had been ordained an elder and set apart as branch president in Calcutta only a week after his baptism, had also departed for England with the intention of learning more about doctrines and operations of the Church. Willes soon organized the group and gave the male members responsibilities such as that of secretary, treasurer, and book agent. Plans were made to publish a tract in the Bengali and Hindustani languages. Within a few days after his arrival, Willes was informed by James Patric Meik, one of the first converts, that he intended to build a lecture hall on land he had leased for the Church. By the time Elder Willes had been in India for two weeks, he had lectured several times concerning the gospel, and he was sure that he would have success. He was elated by a report from a native Indian woman named Anna, who had been baptized by Maurice White, to the effect that a whole church of Indian Episcopalian Christians would desire baptism just as soon as matters could "be arranged in relation to their social position, etc."6