WILDER, Royal Gould

[s. 802] : Born at Bridport, Vt., October 27, 1816; graduated at Middle bury College, 1839; graduated at And over Theological Seminary, 1845; sailed for India as a mi ionary of the ABCFM in 1846. He was stationed for six years at Ahmadnagar. The seminary, containing from 50 to 80 boys, was put under his care by In 1852 he went to Kolhapur. On tlie mi ion. his arrival the Brahmans petitioned for his banishment, but he continued at his post, and after five years had one convert. When he went there he found in a population of 44,000 only one school, in a back street, with twelve boys. When he left in 1857 there was a government college, costing 8200,000, and he was requested to make the opening addre . In the years 1854-56 occurred a controversy between Dr. R. Anderson and the mi ionaries concerning the place of education in the mi ionary enterprise. Mr. Wilder, in common with all his a ociates, was a strong advocate of schools for the Hindus; was in favor of employing even heathen teachers, if Christians could not be obtained, and refused to abandon his schools, or curtail educational work, as required by Dr. Anderson. Mr. Wilder’s health having failed from the severe labor and exposure involved in founding the new station at Kolhapur, he embarked in 1857 for America, the day after His health having the Sepoy mutiny broke out. improved, he offered in 1858 to return to his station, but was informed by Dr. Anderson that the Prudential Committee had voted to discontinue the Kolhapur Mi ion. His Presbytery and friends approving his course, he returned to Kolhapur in 1861, and established an independent mi ion. On reaching his Indian home he found his beautiful church had been sold and turned He received gen in to a Mohammedan mosque. erous aid for a second church. There he continued to labor for twelve years, receiving no aid from any society, but sustained by voluntary gifts, Sir Bartle Frere, Governor of Bombay, and other English people, as well as natives, con From 1861 to 1869 he tributing to the work. contributed many articles to the Bombay Times and Gazette on the subject of the system of He also took ’a prominent national education. part in memorializing Parliament, and inducing the Indian Government to establish the present system. In 1871 he transferred the Kolhapur Mi ion to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Mi ions, and was a mi ionary of that Board till 1875, when, partly for his health and partly to educate his children, he left India and returned home, having been engaged in mi ion work for During that time he had thirty-two years. preached in 3,000 cities, towns, and villages, had distributed 3,000,000 pages of tracts, had gathered into schools 3,300 pupils, of whom 300 were girls. Besides this, he had served on committees for the translation and revision of the Bible, and had written and published commentaries on three Gospels, and had edited and translated onics. 784 many books. The ve el which brought his luggage by sea was wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope, and among his goods that were lost was his manuscript history of the Kolhapur kingdom, with full diary of his mi ionary work. His later years were spent at Princeton, N. J. In 1877 he started the Mi ionary Review, which he edited with ability and succe . He longed to return to India, and when the Review was provided for, he determined, tho a great sufferer from an internal malady, to sail for Kolhapur. But liis work was done, and on the day when the Review was transferred to other hands, and he had sent to the printers proofs of the closing number of the last volume, he was called away. He died in New York October 8, 1887. 802