Capt. Benjamin Wickes

Capt. Benjamin Wickes often used his ships to transport missionaries to India during the early years of the BMS. An elder in the Third Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Wickes was nevertheless a strong supporter of the BMS, informing the London Committee, upon learning that his passengers for India were BMS missionaries, that “my heart rejoiced,” bringing “to my mind a desire which I had felt some years past . . . that I might have command of a ship that should convey some of these messengers of peace to the heathen.” According to S. Pearce Carey, Wickes was the son of a Baptist minister. Wickes would later serve as an honorary member of the first board of the General Missionary Convention of the American Baptists in 1814. John Blair Smith (1756-1799), after graduating from the College of New Jersey in 1773, served as an educator for many years, including a stint as President of Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia (1779-1789). Smith then served as minister of the Third Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia (1791-1795) before removing to Schenectady, New York, where he served as President of Union College until his death in August 1799. Captain Wickes would have at one time been under the care of Smith during the latter’s pastorate in Philadelphia, but neither Wickes nor Ward would have known of Smith’s death due to their being at sea since May of 1799. See F. A. Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, from 1792 to 1842, 2 vols. (London: T. Ward, and G. and J. Dyer, 1842), 1:50, 156; S. Pearce Carey, William Carey, D.D. (London: George H. Doran, 1923), 182; BMS Periodical Accounts, vol. 1, p. 505; Roger Hayden, “Kettering 1792 and Philadelphia 1814: The Influence of English Baptists upon the Formation of American Baptist Foreign Missions 1790-1814,” Baptist Quarterly 21 (1965-1966), 11-13; 71-72.