Sherren Family Tree » John Robert Morrison (1814-1843)

Personal data John Robert Morrison 

• He was born on April 17, 1814 in Macao, China.Source 1
• He died on August 29, 1843 in Hong Kong, China, he was 29 years old.Source 1

  (died of Malarial Fever)

• He is buried in the year 1843 in Macau, China.
• A child of Robert Morrison and Mary Morton

Household of John Robert Morrison

Notes about John Robert Morrison

Early life The year following his birth, on January 21, 1815 John Morrison was taken by his mother, along with his elder sister, aboard a ship bound for England. They returned to Macau on August 23, 1820, but in less than two years his mother died and he was sent back to England to receive his education. During the next four years he lived near London. When his father left for China on May 1, 1826, he took John with him. He learned the Chinese language from his father, and attended the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca in 1827 - 1830. Career in China He had been a translator for English merchants in the Canton City, China from 1830. In 1832, he accompanied Edmund Roberts, a merchant and diplomat of United States of America, to Siam and Cochin China and establisted trade treaties. He compiled the Chinese Commercial Guide, which provided information on British trader in China. John Morrison succeeded his father in 1834 and was appointed Chinese Secretary to the British East India Company on behalf of British government. He then involved in the diplomacy amist the opium wars from 1839 - 1842. In the negotiations, the Treaty of Nanking was formed. The Government of Hongkong formed after the treaty and he became a member of the Legislative Council and Executive Council, and the first Colonial Secretary of the government under Sir Henry Pottinger. Missionary Work Apart from official duties, John Morrison continued his father's work of the English Protestant Church in Canton and supported those Chinese converts persecuted by the Chinese authorities. He revised his father's translation of the Bible and appealed to the London Missionary Society to continue the missionary work in Canton. In February 1838 he was made Recording Secretary of the Medical Missionary Society. Translation of the Bible In 1840, a group of four people (Walter Henry Medhurst, Charles Gutzlaff, Elijah Coleman Bridgman, and John Robert Morrison) cooperated to translate the Bible into Chinese. The translation of the Hebrew part was done mostly by Gutzlaff from Netherlands Missionary Society, with the exception that the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua were done by the group collectively. This translation, completed in 1847, after John Robert's death is very famous due to its adoption by the revolutionary peasant leader Hong Xiuquan of the Taipingtianguo movement (Taiping Rebellion) as some of the reputed early doctrines of the organization. This Bible translation was a version (in High Wen-li, Traditional Chinese: ???) marvelously correct and faithful to the original. Death & Memorial John Robert Morrison died young in the late summer of 1843 from a nine day episode of malarial fever. This was the same outbreak in Hong Kong that took the life of fellow missionary Samuel Dyer. He is buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery in Macau, close to the grave of this father. Missionary Society. John Robert Morrison died in the autumn of 1843 from malarial fever. He was unmarried.

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Timeline John Robert Morrison

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