Nathan Benjamin was an American missionary serving in Greece, Armenia, Smyrna (today Izmir, Turkey) and Constantinople (today Istanbul, Turkey).
Background
Nathan Benjamin was born on December 14, 1811, in Catskill, New York, the son of Nathan Benjamin, a Revolutionary soldier of distinction, and of Ruth (Seymour) Benjamin. When the father died, Nathan was two years of age, the family moved to Williamstown, Massachussets.
Education
Nathan attended the old Academy at Bennington, Vermont, but his college preparation was chiefly under Prof. Ebenezer Kellogg of Williams College. He graduated at Williams in 1831, studied theology two years at Auburn, and graduated at Andover in 1834.
Career
After a severe struggle at the prospect of sundering home ties, Nathan accepted an appointment as a foreign missionary. After spending one winter in New Haven and another in New York in the study of medicine, and a few months in Vermont as an agent of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, he was ordained at Williamstown, April 21, 1836, and sailed at once for Greece. After eighteen months at Argos, he removed to Athens, where he remained till 1845. He was then transferred to the Armenian mission at Trebizond, but eighteen months later returned to America on account of his wife's health. On the improvement of the latter he returned to the Armenian mission and was at Smyrna from 1847 to 1852, when he removed to Constantinople, where he died of typhus fever three years later.
Benjamin was wonderfully successful as a preaching and teaching missionary. He preached in both Greek and English and exerted a marked influence on educated Greeks through his Bible classes and through personal contact. But his chief work was that of an editor and translator engaged in supplying the country through the mission press with the Bible and evangelical literature in the vernacular. On his return from America he took up the same work for Armenia, acquiring a new language after he was thirty-five. He possessed remarkable executive ability and had large financial and administrative responsibilities in connection with the missions. During his last two years in Athens he was acting American consul, and he founded the Morning Star, the first Armenian newspaper.
Achievements
Connections
On April 25, 1836, Nathan Benjamin was married to Mary G. Wheeler of New York City.