He was born on February 16, 1817 at Manlius, Onondaga County, New York, United States, where his father, Azariah, was proprietor of a cotton-spinning factory. His mother, Zilpah, was a daughter of David Mack of Middlefield, Hampshire County, Massachussets.
Education
After studying at local schools, Smith attended Yale College and graduated in 1837. During a memorable revival at the College in March 1835 he decided to become a medical missionary and thence forth devoted himself to preparation for this work.
From September 1837 to May 1839 he attended the Geneva Medical College at Geneva, New York, then spent several months at a dispensary and hospital in Philadelphia, and in the autumn of 1839 returned to Yale for a final year in medicine (M. D. 1840) and for theological training. While studying in the Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1842, he also attended lectures on law, astronomy, and meteorology.
Career
While studying he found time to write for the American Journal of Science and Arts an article on "Electricity in Machinery" (April-June 1840), based on observation in his father's factory.
On August 30, 1842, he was ordained by the Presbytery of Onondaga at Manlius, and on November 19 sailed from Boston for Constantinople, as a missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. From the first his work was primarily among the Gregorian Armenian and Nestorian Christians, and from 1843 to 1845 he traveled extensively throughout Asiatic Turkey, preaching and practising medicine in Trebizond, Brusa, Smyrna, and many interior cities, including Mosul.
In 1844 he visited the pioneer Assyriological excavations of Botta and described them in an article, "Ruins of Nineveh, " in the American Journal of Science and Arts, April-June 1845. In 1845 he settled in Erzurum, where in the following year an Armenian mob plundered his house and seized a Gregorian priest with Protestant leanings who had sought refuge there. John Porter Brown of the American legation in Constantinople was sent with a Turkish commissioner to investigate the incident and obtained for Smith a payment for damages and a formal apology from the Gregorian Patriarch.
Accompanied by his wife, he immediately returned to Aintab, where he devoted himself and his small private fortune to such missionary activities as preaching, writing tracts, and practising medicine.
On a journey in the spring of 1851 to Arabkir, Malatya, and Diyarbekir, where he founded a Protestant church, he contracted typhoid fever, of which he died shortly after his return.
Achievements
Personality
He was always a careful student and the possessor of an immense fund of general information.
Connections
He married, on July 6, his first cousin, Corinth Sarah Elder of Cortlandville, New York.