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Ramseyer-Northern Bible Society Collection
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Founded in 1804, the British and Foreign Bible Society is, one might say, the grandfather of Bible Societies of the world. Its beginnings are said to have been prompted by the efforts of a young Welsh girl, Mary Jones, to obtain a copy of the Bible in Welsh, for which she was willing to walk many miles barefoot. From this impetus the Society went on to provide Scriptures to the British Empire and then to the world at large.
This Society was early active in the making of type fonts for non-Roman alphabets and syllabaries and was instrumental in making possible the printing of texts in the Evans syllabary devised initially for writing the Cree language and still used for northern Ojibway and Inuit. Passengers leaving Thunder Bay, Ontario, airport today will see announcements in Ojibway in the Evans script.
In 1826 the British and Foreign Bible Society decided to exclude the Apocryphal books from their distributed Bibles. This led to a rift with some other Bible Societies, but contributed to the exclusion of the Apocrypha from most subsequent Protestant Bibles.
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 The Story of Mary Jones whose barefoot search for a Bible in Welsh began the activities of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Printed in Russian in Berlin by the BFBS. #1405 |
  The Gospels in Iriquois. Printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1880. #372 |
St. Luke's Gospel in Gujarati. Printed by the Bombay Auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1930. #1061 |
  British and Foreign Bible Society book of samples of non-Roman type-faces. |
A History of the British and Foreign Bible Society by William Canton, published in 1910. #751 |
St. Mark's Gospel in kiSwahili. Printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1931. #714 |
  
St. Luke's Gospel in Malay. Printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1914. #949 |
