In 1854, he married Rachel Marshman, a daughter of the Indian scholar and missionary Joshua Marshman and a sister of the wife of General Havelock. His brother-in-law Havelock was a friend of Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-General of India, and it was this connection that brought him to Burma and eventually India. His first wife died in India in 1862, and during a two-year sabbatical in Europe from 1865 to 1867, he met and married Katharina Hassie, eighteen years his junior. She moved to India with him and the couple had six children, some of whom did not reach adulthood.