Ashmore family

William Ashmore, Jr. was born to William, Sr. and Martha Sanderson on September 28, 1851 in Bangkok, Siam where his father was a Baptist missionary to Chinese emigrants from the Swatow District of South China. William, Jr. learned to speak English, Chinese, and Siamese while growing up. His brother Frank was born December 21, 1853. Martha Ashmore became ill in 1858 causing the family's return to the United States; she died enroute. William, Jr. and Frank were raised by her family in the following years, first on their Grandfather Daniel Sanderson's farm in Brookline, Massachusetts and then with their Aunt Carrie Sanderson Spalding in Warren, Rhode Island, while their father acted as missionary to the Swatow District.

William began attending Brown University in 1866, at the age of fifteen, and graduated in 1870, third in his graduating class and also the youngest member. He studied several languages, including French, German, Greek, and Latin. After graduating, he was a teacher, first at Peddie Institute in Hightstown, New Jersey and later at Shurtleff College in Alton, Illinois and at Brown. He traveled in Europe during the interim. In 1876 he enrolled at the Rochester Theological Seminary, graduating in 1879. In Rochester, William studied Hebrew. He received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Brown in 1905.

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