Luther Rice Silhouette 1830 ||25 March 1783 ||25 September 1836
Edgefield, South Carolina Luther Rice (1783–1836), was a Baptist
minister who, after a thwarted mission to India, returned to
American where he spent the remainder of his career raising
funds for missions and advocating for the formation of a unified
Baptist missionary-sending body, which culminated in
establishment of the Southern Baptist Convention. He used funds
raised for missions to establish The Columbian College (now The
George Washington University) in Washington, DC. Luther Rice was
born March 25, 1783 in Northborough, Massachusetts to Amos Rice
and Sarah (Graves) Rice. As a young man at Williams College he
became part of a group of young ministers and aspiring
missionaries who called themselves "the Brethren." (Rice was a
leader in this group famous for the "Haystack Prayer Meeting,"
although he was not present that day). He sailed to Calcutta,
India on 18 February 1812 with Adoniram Judson as
Congregationalist missionaries and met with