Merrick Streeter was born in Worcester, Massachusetts and graduated from Coburn Classical Institute in Waterville, Maine and from Brown University in 1907. In 1910, he graduated from Rochester Theological Seminary and was ordained in the Baptist Ministry. He served from 1910 until 1942 as a missionary in Burma and also received a divinity degree from Rochester in 1934. His wife Mary Hall Streeter served in Burma with him. Their work was mainly with the Burmese people, but an effort was made to develop evangelistic work among Indian and Chinese people as well. In 31 years of service, they only had three furloughs in the U.S. After a hazardous escape from Japanese forces occupying Burma in World War II, he worked from 1942 to 1945 in the U.S. Office of War Information in San Francisco as a translator and broadcaster of messages to Burma. Two years after ending his war service, he received a doctor of divinity degree from Brown. From 1950 to 1954 he was superintendent of the New England Baptist Conference and camps at Ocean Park in Maine. The also served for churches in Providence, Jamestown, Fiskeville, Natick, East Providence and Cranston, all in Rhode Island. Guided by a Voice is the biography of Merrick Streeter that Mary wrote in her retirement years.