Hooker, Edward D. Memoir of Mrs. Sarah Lanman Smith, Late of the American Mission in Syria, under the direction of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Boston: T. R. Marvin, 1844. Second Edition. [11522]
Faded maroon cloth spine with plain boards, no spine title label, joints good, 7 7/8 x 5 inches. Steel-engraved portrait with printed signature; lacks the tissue guard. 396 pages, tight. Frontis & title page with dark foxing and stains, stains get smaller and end by page 22; light foxing elsewhere. Fair. Hardcover.
Sarah Lanman Huntington Smith (1802-1836), b. Norwich, CT; d. Boojah, Turkey.
Influenced by the missionary labors of Harriet Newell and Ann Judson, she devoted herself to missionary enterprises. From the late 1820s until 1833 she worked as a teacher for members of the Mohegan tribe, before marrying Eli Smith, a missionary and a friend of missionaries H.G.O. and Elizabeth Baker Dwight.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent them to Syria, where, after learning Arabic, Mrs. Smith aided her husband with his translations and started a school for girls, at which she taught until her death in 1836.
The Rev. Edward Hooker, a graduate of Middlebury College and the Andover Theological Seminary, which Mr. Smith also attended, wrote and compiled Mrs. Smith’s biography.
Among the letters Rev. Hooker included, is one Mrs. Smith writes to a female relative about the devotional life of a missionary: “I need not dwell long, at present, upon the highest qualification requisite for a missionary, though I should love to occupy many pages with it. You will readily believe that no common degree of love to God and love to man, will suffice for a foundation, in forming yourself to become one. I will only remark, that this must be acquired by daily and prolonged communion with God. You must not only take a few minutes, at regular seasons, for prayer; but you must secure some of your most valuable hours; and so occupy yourself in them as to get near to God; and so as to bring eternal things near to you, that you may throw your entire self into the work which engages his infinite mind; and that every thing beside may dwindle to a point.” (p. 227).
