Joshua Marshman (20 April 1768 – 6 December 1837) was a Baptist missionary in Bengal, India from 1799 until his death. He was a member of the Serampore trio with William Carey and William Ward. The trio founded Serampore University, many primary and secondary schools, and translated and published a large number of works, including translations of the Bible. Marshman was "an accomplished scholar, linguist and theologian and was a prolific author and polemicist". His mission involved social reforms and intellectual debates with educated Hindus such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy.
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Origins
Joshua Marshman was born on 20 April 1768 in Britain at Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire, England. His father, John Marshman was a weaver. Of his family little is known, except that they traced their descent from an officer in the Army of Cromwell, one of a band who, at the Restoration, relinquished, for conscience-sake, all views of worldly aggrandisement, and retired into the country to support himself by his own industry.
His father John passed the early part of his life at sea and was engaged in the Hind, a British frigate commanded by Captain Robert Bond, at the 1759 capture of Quebec. Shortly after this, he returned to England and in 1764 married Mary Couzener. She was a descendant of a French family who had sought refuge in England following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; after his marriage he lived in Westbury Leigh and took up the trade of a weaver.