William Henry Roberts (25 October 1847 – 24 December 1919) was a Baptist minister from the United States who worked for many years as a missionary in Burma.[1]
On his arrival in Burma, Roberts obtained grudging permission from the Burmese king, Thibaw Min, to build a school and educate the Kachins. The king, a devout Buddhist, granted Roberts "land the size of a buffalo skin".
Roberts bought a buffalo skin, cut it into thin strips and used it to measure out the mission compound.[2]
Although his wife soon died from malaria, Roberts was to carry out his mission for 34 years. His daughter, Dora, and his son-in-law, John E. Cummings, also became missionaries to Burma.
In 1881 Roberts remarried and established a school in Bhamo with his second wife, Alice Roberts (d. 1933). They had a son, William Henry Roberts, Jr.
In 1917, the Roberts retired from missionary work and returned to Newton, Massachusetts, where Roberts died in 1919.[3]
Roberts was followed by the Swedish-American missionary Ola Hanson, who arrived in 1890 and did much work in compiling a grammar and dictionary for their Jinghpaw language, and in translating hymns and the Bible into Jingpaw. In 1892 George J. Geis arrived, establishing a mission at Myitkyina, to the North of Bhamo.[4]
A school in Bhamo was named after Alice Roberts.[3]
^ abcDavid Shavit (1990). "William Henry Roberts". The United States in Asia: a historical dictionary. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 423–424. ISBN0-313-26788-X. Retrieved 2010-11-10.
