James Cosh

James Cosh was a Scottish-Australian missionary and academic.

Biography

He was born at Whitleys near Stranraer, and studied at the University of Glasgow and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh before being ordained by the Reformed Presbyterian Church.
Cosh served for four years on Efate in the New Hebrides. He translated the Biblical books of Genesis and John into the local language.
In 1870, Cosh moved on to Australia and served as a theological lecturer, before being appointed to the Hunter Baillie chair of Oriental and Polynesian Languages in St Andrew's College, University of Sydney in 1899.
In 1881 he was the General Assembly delegate to the Pan-Presbyterian Council at Belfast; later that year he became Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales.
J. Graham Miller suggests that Cosh's "devoted and distinguished service in Australia revealed the permanent value of those few brief years of missionary work on Efate."

On 31 January 1866 he married Janet Frame. They had four children, the eldest of whom, James, became a Presbyterian preacher.

In 1892, he received an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the University of Glasgow.
There is a memorial window at St Andrew’s College Chapel in his honour.