Carter, Rev Charles

- bn Leicester 29 October 1828 d. Auckland 6 July 1914. Missionary, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) 1853-62; 1869-81; 1888-92. Pastor. Trained at Horton College (later Rawdon College). Churches: Ponsonby 1882-85; Caversham 1885-88. First President of the Union and Missionary Society 1882. An exceptional linguist, Carter arrived in Ceylon in 1853 with his new wife (see separate entry) under the English Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. Already trained in Hebrew and Greek, Carter mastered Singhalese and preached at Matakooli churches before beginning a pastorate in Kandy, where he learned Tamil, trained nationals and began his first translation of the New Testament into Singhalese. When throat problems took him home to the U.K. in 1862 he wasted no time in starting an Old Testament Singhalese translation. Upon return to Ceylon in 1869 his translation work continued with hymns, a scheme of Singhalese verbs and an English-Singhalese dictionary. At this point he had also mastered German and Sanskrit. By 1881 his health had given out and he came to New Zealand, where he pastored the Ponsonby church, became the inaugural President of the Baptist Union, and was instrumental in founding the New Zealand Baptist Missionary Society. His final term in Ceylon also took him to India to visit N.Z.B.M.S. staff, and he learned Bengali as well as completing a Singhalese-English dictionary. Ref.: Obituary: NZB October 1914, 151.