Early Life
Robert Caldwell was born at Clady, Northern Ireland, on May 7, 1814 to Scottish parents. Initially self-taught and religious, young Caldwell graduated from the University of Glasgow and was fascinated by the comparative study of languages. At 24, Caldwell arrived in Madras on January 8, 1838 as a missionary of the London Missionary Society and later joined the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Mission (SPG). To further his missionary objectives, Caldwell realised that he had to be proficient in Tamil to proselytise the masses and he began a systematic study of the language. He was consecrated Bishop of Tirunelveli in 1877. In 1844, Caldwell married Eliza Mault (1822–99); the couple was to have seven children together. She was the elder daughter of the veteran Travancore missionary, Reverend Charles Mault (1791–1858) of the London Missionary Society. For more than forty years, Eliza worked in Travancore and Tirunelveli proselytising the vulnerable, especially Tamil-speaking women.
Read more about this topic: Robert Caldwell
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or just felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“The anti-suffragist talk of sheltering women from the fierce storms of life is a lot of cant. I have no patience with it. These storms beat on woman just as fiercely as they do on man, and she is not trained to defend herself against them.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)