William Goodell

1792-1867. Pioneer American Congregational missionary to the Near East. Born in Templeton, Massachusetts, he became one of a succession of notable scholarly missionaries in the Near East. He served there forty years, not counting one furlough. Appointed by the American Board in 1823, he helped establish the work in Beirut, which became the center of the Syrian Mission. In 1828 the mission was obliged to move to Malta, where for three years he supervised the press and worked on his Armeno-Turkish translation of the Bible. Sent with H.G.O. Dwight to Constantinople in 1831, he helped found the work in Turkey. His major accomplishment was the translation of the Bible into Armeno-Turkish from the Hebrew and Greek.