Along with Henry Woodward, Fisk, and Miron Winslow he was ordained by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in 1818 and was married to Mary Christie the same year.
[1][3][4][6][9] He spent most of his missionary career at Oodooville (also spelled Uduville or Uduvil), where he supervised the church, schools, and did evangelistic work among heathens in villages.
Besides his work in school at Oodooville, he was a preacher who preferred to go into the crowd and reach them in their own idiom; hence, he got to know the natives mind and heart better than other missionaries.
In January 1834, he led the group of American missionaries to explore the suitable locations for a new ABCFM mission station to the Tamil people of South India; thus, Madura, also spelled Madurai, was identified as the right site for new American Madura Mission under the guidance of Levi Spaulding.
[1][2][4][6][10][11] He died at an age of eighty-one on 18 June 1873 after fifty-four years of missionary service in India and Sri Lanka.