College in Calcutta at a time when the mission in that city was experiencing difficulties. During this period in India, he assisted in founding a mission to work among the Santal people and also had a significant role in establishing the Simla Union Church, which opened in 1870 and catered for a united congregation of European Presbyterians and Dissenters. After another period in Scotland from 1873, when he served as Secretary of the church's Foreign Mission Committee, he returned to India for the last time in 1880 and remained there for two years. Later, after 1888, he worked on behalf of the church in Nice, France. In recognition of his being the oldest minister of the Free Church, Mitchell presided over the vote in the adoption of the 1900 Uniting Act, which brought about United Free Church of Scotland, through the union of the Free Church of Scotland with the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Mitchell died at South Leith manse, his brother Very Rev James Mitchell's home in Leith, on 14 November 1904. His brother had served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1901. John was buried in the city's Dean Cemetery on 18 November. The grave lies in the first northern extension, behind his brother's grave. Family He and his wife, Maria H. M. Flyter, who died in 1907, had no children. Publications Among Mitchell's writings were: Letters to Indian Youth Memoir (1858), of his missionary colleague Robert Nesbit, whom he had joined in Bombay at the outset of his career Hinduism, Past and Present (1885) In Western India (1899), a partial autobiography The Great Religions of India (1905), published posthumously and based on his Duff Lectures of 1903 Mitchell also translated works from Marathi into English. References External links 1815 births 1904 deaths Clergy from Aberdeen 19th-century Scottish writers Scottish orientalists 19th-century Ministers of the Free Church of Scotland Scottish Protestant missionaries People associated with the University of Aberdeen People educated at Aberdeen Grammar School Academic staff of Scottish Church College Burials at the Dean Cemetery Scottish translators Christian missionaries in India 19th-century British translators Missionary linguists