Edward Stallybrass
Edward Stallybrass was a British Congregational missionary to the Buryat people of Siberia. He translated the Bible into Mongolian.
Biography
A Congregationalist, Edward Stallybrass trained at Homerton College in London, a college for Free Church men who were at that time still barred from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. He was ordained at Stepney in 1816, and in the same year became engaged to Sarah Robinson. In 1817, they were married and both left for Russia the same year under the auspices of the London Missionary Society.Mission in Russia
When Stallybrass arrived in Saint Petersburg in 1817, he was joined by Cornelius Rahmn from Gothenburg. Both men studied Russian, and in January 1818, having received authorisation to begin their missionary work, began the 4000-mile sledge journey to Irkutsk. On the way, they stopped in Moscow and were granted an audience by Alexander I of Russia, who told them that "he had given most positive orders...that every facility should be afforded" to the missionaries.Arriving in Irkutsk, they soon found the area unsuitable; Stallybrass visited various places before setting up a mission station in Selenginsk in 1819, among the Buryat people; he was joined by two Scotsmen, William Swan and Robert Yuille. Rahmn's wife was unable to handle the Siberian climate, and the Rahmns moved to Sarepta. Stallybrass and his company moved their mission to Khodon in 1828, where Sarah died and was buried in 1833. In 1835 Stallybrass returned to England via Denmark. In Copenhagen he married Charlotte Ellah; afterward, he returned to Siberia, where Charlotte died in 1839.
Work at the mission consisted of preaching, tract distribution, schools work and the translation of the Scriptures into the Buryat language. The mission was suppressed in 1840 by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church under Alexander's successor, Nicolas I. Stallybrass returned to England in 1841 and left the LMS.