Background
He was born on January 24, 1865 at Mount Seir, Urmia (Urumiah), Persia (now Iran), son of the Rev. John Haskell and Sarah Jane (Dawes) Shedd. His first American ancestor was Daniel Shed who settled in Braintree, Massachussets, about 1642.
(Preface The following chapters were prepared in response ...)
Preface The following chapters were prepared in response to an invitation from the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary to fill theS tudent Lectureship on Missions. They were delivered in substantially the form published here. After delivery atP rinceton they were given also at Auburn Theological Seminary, McC ormick Theological Seminary, Chicago Theological Seminary, and the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Kentucky. The kind reception accorded them in these places has encouraged me to present them to the general public. I am greatly indebted to the following libraries for the generous loan of books :C aseM emorial Library of Hartford Theological Seminary, theL ibrary of Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Foreign Missions Library inN ew York. The original sources consulted have been Syriac. (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology. Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the aged text. Read books online for free at www.forgottenbooks.org
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He was born on January 24, 1865 at Mount Seir, Urmia (Urumiah), Persia (now Iran), son of the Rev. John Haskell and Sarah Jane (Dawes) Shedd. His first American ancestor was Daniel Shed who settled in Braintree, Massachussets, about 1642.
William graduated at Marietta College in 1887, and after two years in Persia entered Princeton Theological Seminary, where he graduated with the highest honors in 1892.
Ordained as an evangelist by the Presbytery of Athens, Ohio, June 23 of the same year, he returned to Persia and resumed work at his father's mission to the Nestorian Christians at Urmia. He was treasurer of the mission, superintendent of schools, and teacher of theology as well as editor of a paper in Syriac. He made many friends among the Mohammedans, although able to do little mission work among them.
He was a frequent contributor to various periodicals and was the author of two books: Islam and the Oriental Churches (1904), consisting of his lectures at various American seminaries, and a biography of Dr. J. H. Cochran in Persian (1907). He was also a leading collaborator in the Syriac Concordance to the Peshitta. This labor of years, existing only in manuscript but well known to scholars, perished with the destruction of the mission in 1918.
In 1905 he became the head of the legal board of the Evangelical Church, which was the court recognized by the government for the trial of all cases between Christians except those purely criminal. He became an authority on Persian law and an arbitrator of wisdom and power. The World War brought him into marked prominence. On the withdrawal of the Russian troops from the province in January 1915, the Christian population of the entire region flocked into Urmia, where they were besieged for five months by the Turks and Kurds. Shedd's cool-headed management of the situation was a factor in saving thousands from starvation and epidemic.
After a year in America in 1916, he added to his other duties the chairmanship of the Urmia Relief Committee. In 1917 he was made a member of the food commission, at the request of the Persian government. On the final withdrawal of the Russians, January 1, 1918, he became honorary vice-consul of the United States, and the mission compound became the American consulate. For many months during the ensuing siege by Turks and Kurds, Shedd was the chief defender of the Christians, and when some seventy thousand of them left the city, July 31, 1918, to flee to Hamadan, he followed them and protected the rear. Most of the refugees reached the British lines, but Shedd died of cholera on August 7 at Sain Kala.
William Ambrose Shedd established a school for Moslem boys which became a part of Urmia College. He was a leader in the movement for the union of the old Nestorian and Evangelical churches and effected a working agreement under which there was a free interchange of pulpits. He tried to reconcile the Assyrians and the Muslim Persians but without success. He wrote two famous books: Islam and the Oriental Churches (1904) and a biography of Dr. J. H. Cochran in Persian (1907).
(Preface The following chapters were prepared in response ...)
He was married three times: on June 21, 1894, to Adela Ludlow Myers, who died November 30, 1901; on April 24, 1903, to Louise Wilbur, who had been appointed to the mission in 1900 and died of typhus May 17, 1915; and on July 5, 1917, to Mary Edna Lewis, who accompanied him in the flight from Urmia and, with two daughters of the first marriage and two of the second, survived him.
