Introduction

Biography

Charles was the son of James Dall and Hen­ri­et­ta Aus­tin. He was adopt­ed at age se­ven by his ba­che­lor un­cle and maid­en aunt, Will­iam and Sar­ah Dall of Bos­ton, Mas­sa­chu­setts.

He at­tend­ed the Frank­lin School, and gra­du­at­ed from the Bos­ton La­tin School (1833), Har­vard (1837), and the Cam­bridge Di­vi­ni­ty School (1840).

Afterward, he worked as a min­is­ter at large. He was or­dained an ev­an­gel­ist in St. Lou­is, Mis­sou­ri, in 1841, and lat­er con­tin­ued this work in Bal­ti­more.

In 1855, the Am­er­ican Uni­ta­ri­an As­so­cia­tion com­mis­sioned Ap­ple­ton as a mis­sion­ary, and de­spite ex­treme­ly poor health, he sailed from Bos­ton to Cal­cut­ta in Feb­ru­ary of that year.

He was cough­ing blood dur­ing the voy­age (tu­ber­cu­lo­sis?), but ev­en­tu­al­ly reached In­dia. Un­con­scious on ar­riv­al, he had to be car­ried ashore on a lit­ter.

He re­co­vered well enough to spend three de­cades la­bor­ing on the sub­con­ti­nent. He in­her­it­ed a large per­son­al for­tune, and spent near­ly all of it on mis­sion work.