| Edwin Elisha Bliss | |
Born: April 12, 1817 in Westminster or Putney, Vermont, United States Died: December 20, 1892 Occupation: Missionary Source Citation: Dictionary of American Biography and Genealogy of the Bliss Family in America. Edwin Elisha Bliss (Apr. 12, 1817 - Dec. 20, 1892), a missionary, was born in Putney, Vt., the son of Harvey and Abigail (Grout) Bliss. He was one of eight children, and one of three who became missionaries. A sister, Emma (Mrs. Van Lennep) went to Turkey, and a brother, Isaac Grout, to Turkey and Egypt. Edwin's early education was finished at the High School in Springfield, Mass., where his parents then dwelt. Thence he went to Amherst College, graduating in 1837. For two years following graduation he taught in Amherst Academy, and then entered Andover Seminary, from which he received his diploma in 1842. On Feb. 26, 1843 he married Isabella Holmes Porter, of Portland, Me. His ordination had taken place on Feb. 8, 1843, and on Mar. 1 he and Mrs. Bliss sailed from Boston on the bark Emma Isadora with a notable company bound for Smyrna. After arrival in the East the Blisses proceeded to
Trebizond instead of to Kurdistan and the Nestorian Mission, for they
learned of trouble in the Kurdish mountains and could secure from the
government (Turkey) only permissive passports and not protective firmans.
They never, in fact, went into Kurdistan. Instead, they were
"permanently connected with the Mission to the Armenians," and
labored from 1843 to 1851 at Trebizond and from 1851 to 1856 at a new
station opened by Bliss at Marsovan. At both stations the evangelical work
suffered severe persecution at the hands of the orthodox Armenians. In
February 1856 Bliss was transferred from Marsovan to Constantinople to
give his time to literary work, and for thirty-six years he labored
quietly and effectively in the department of publication. He edited the Avedaper
("Messenger") from 1865 to 1892, a newspaper which had
become in 1855 a weekly issued in three forms: Turkish in Armenian
characters, Turkish in Greek characters, and Armenian in Armenian. It had
1,500 subscribers and some ten thousand readers throughout Turkey, and was
a fruitful agent of inspiration to Christian workers, and of social and
religious reformation. Its editor declared one of its important offices to
be the exposure of "the shameless misstatements" made in other
papers about the work of the American Board. Bliss edited, also, a monthly
children's paper issued in the three forms mentioned above. In addition to
this editorial work he wrote pamphlets and tracts, "helps in Bible
study, narratives of Christian life and experience." He was the
author of a Bible Handbook (in Armenian), and frequent articles in
the Missionary Herald. He visited the United States four times on
various errands, including the quest of health. While located at Marsovan
he had contracted malaria from which he was never thereafter free. Before
his death he had been for sometime in feeble health and unable to work.
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