In William Carey early childhood years, we find William as a great lover of birds. And animals with whom he often socialized. So great was his concern in this regard that he was ready to do anything. To be able to study their lives. One day, going into the garden, he saw a nest of birds on the branch of a tall tree.
William Carey was born in Parkersburg, England, County Northamptonshire, in 1761, the first of five children of Edmond Carey. The village schoolmaster. The whole family had a preference for study. But mainly this son, who proved himself in his father’s school a most excellent element. He had a great zeal for learning and lively intelligence.
Being of excessive curiosity, a trait which immensely helped him in his later studies, he determined to climb the tree. He said and did so when he was almost at the goal. He slipped and fell so badly that he stayed there until his parents came and picked him up. The doctor who was called found that the boy had broken his leg, but after days of recovery. The first thing he did when he could run again was to climb the tree to see the bird’s nest.
Why is William Carey famous?
But it took God to raise people like Carey. Who opened the doors of mission and set an example to the world. Great things can be done through courage and perseverance.
William Carey is known for going to India after long controversies with church leaders who disagreed with missionary work. Because the church did not see the need to send missionaries to unchurched countries.
After much insistence, the English government passed a law in 1829 banning Suttee burials, and Carey’s wish was granted; what’s more, he translated the law into the native language. He also translated the Bible into six dialects of the Indian people, the New Testament into twenty-three others, and parts of it into five others. Thirty-four languages in all.
What trial did William have to go through before he was converted?
At the age of 14, due to family poverty, William was unable to continue his schooling. He was an apprentice to a Piddington shoemaker, Clarke Nichols, where he had to stand from morning till night in front of piles of broken boots waiting to be repaired. Although he knew about God from his parents, William was not interested in spiritual things. On the contrary, he thought of himself as a good Christian, a moral young man, regularly attended church and even sang in the choir.
For all his determination, William had to go through a great ordeal before the actual conversion took place, namely that on Christmas Eve, he went according to the custom of the site to his master’s merchants and received from one of them a false shilling. Unbeknownst to the boy, he ran joyfully to the nearest shop to buy various things for his parents, his sister, and himself.
When he gave the shopkeeper the coin, the shopkeeper rejected it as fake. In the moment’s confusion, he took cash out of his master’s purse and paid. The amount taken had to be made up, and as Carey had none, he decided to tell a lie, that is, to tell his master that the coin belonged to him.
What was William Carey’s main activity?
In 1779 he began his career as a shoemaker working for Thomas Old, and in 1781 he married Dorothy Plackett, his employer’s sister-in-law. They live together in Hackelton, where they join the Congregational church.
Although his main activity is “shoemaking,” William Carey is a keen scholar, a man of extraordinary ability, and a remarkable self-taught man. He teaches himself Latin, Greek, and Hebrew to study the Bible in the original, learns French and Dutch in just a few weeks, and is also passionate about geography and botany.
On October 5, 1785, after making a serious study of the New Testament on the question of baptism, he was baptized by Dr. John Ryland in the River Nene.