Background
was born at Middleboro, Massachussets, the son of Philander Washburn, a manufacturer, and Elizabeth (Homes), and a cousin of Edward Abiel Washburn. His ancestor, John Washburn, settled in Duxbury, Massachussets, in 1632.
was born at Middleboro, Massachussets, the son of Philander Washburn, a manufacturer, and Elizabeth (Homes), and a cousin of Edward Abiel Washburn. His ancestor, John Washburn, settled in Duxbury, Massachussets, in 1632.
After attending Pierce Academy in Middleboro and Phillips Academy at Andover, he entered Amherst College in 1851. Graduating in 1855, he spent a year in travel through Europe and the Near East, then entered Andover Theological Seminary. In 1862 he returned to Andover, completed the theological course.
He went to Constantinople as treasurer of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. On July 29, 1863, was ordained at Middleboro as a Congregational minister. Appointed a missionary of the American Board at Constantinople, he also taught at Robert College, which was then located in Bebek, a suburb on the Bosphorus. In the spring of 1868 he left Turkey to devote himself to religious work in New York City but a year later was persuaded by Christopher R. Robert to take charge of the college during President Hamlin's preoccupation with the construction of a building at Rumili Hissar. Organization of a new plan of study, teaching, and administration occupied him until May 1871, when the institution moved to its new quarters, and in June he departed for America. Urged by Hamlin and the trustees, he returned in the autumn to conduct the college while the president was attempting to raise funds in the United States. At first director and professor of philosophy, Washburn became president in 1878. During his twenty-five years in this office the college steadily increased its enrolment, its faculty, its physical plant, its endowment, and its influence among the peoples of the Near East. After 1872 there were many Bulgarian students, a number of whom later became prominent in the political and intellectual life of their country. Both Washburn and Prof. Albert E. Long received immediate information regarding the Bulgarian massacres of 1876 and the first accounts to reach western Europe originated with them. In 1879 both were voted the thanks of the Bulgarian nation by the National Convention. Washburn was later twice decorated by the Bulgarian government and long remained its trusted counselor. During several visits to the United States he secured financial support for the college and was repeatedly consulted on Near Eastern affairs by Secretary Blaine and Secretary Hay and by President Theodore Roosevelt. Using various pseudonyms, he contributed articles on history and current affairs to the Contemporary Review and under his own name wrote regularly for American magazines. His valuable study of the geology of the Bosphorus appeared in the American Journal of Science (September 1873) and his "Calvert's Supposed Relics of Man in the Miocene of the Dardanelles" was published in the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. On September 20, 1903, he resigned the presidency of Robert College, but for another year held his professorship. From 1904 to 1906 he served as treasurer of the college in Boston, then returned for two last years of teaching before settling finally in Boston. Declining appointment as United States ambassador to Turkey because of a conviction that his missionary affiliations made acceptance unwise, he lectured during 1909 at the Lowell Institute and in the same year published his Fifty Years in Constantinople, which is a history of Robert College rather than an autobiography.
A man of broad interests and abundant common sense, just and firm in dealing with men, a devout Christian but no proselytizer, Washburn earned the complete confidence of the peoples among whom he worked.
On April 15, 1859, he married Henrietta Loraine, daughter of Cyrus Hamlin, president of Robert College.