Ashbel Green Simonton was a North-American Presbyterian minister and missionary, the first missionary to settle a Protestant church in Brazil, Igreja Presbiteriana do Brasil.
Background
Simonton was born in West Hanover, southern Pennsylvania, and spent his childhood on the family"s estate, named Antigua. His parents were the doctor and politician William Simonton (elected twice to Congress) and Mistress Martha Davis Snodgrass (1791–1862), daughter of James Snodgrass, a Presbyterian minister, who was the pastor of the local church.
Career
Ashbel was named after Ashbel Green, president of New Jersey College. The boys (William, John, James, Thomas and Ashbel) used to call themselves the "quinque fratres" (five brothers). In 1846, the family moved to Harrisburg, where Simonton finished high school.
After graduating in New Jersey College (the future Princeton University), in 1852, he spent about a year and a half in Mississippi, working as a teacher for young boys.
Disappointed with the lack of attention by the local authorities for teaching, Simonton went back to Pennsylvania and tried to become a lawyer, although by that time many people would advise him to become a minister, something to which his mother had consecrated him at his birth. In 1855 he had a deep religious experience during a revival and went to the Princeton Seminary.
He was ordained in 1859 and arrived in Brazil on August 12, the same year. They came back to Brazil in July 1863.
Simonton died on December 9, 1867, victim of a tropical disease named "febre biliosa".