Levi Parsons (1792-1822) and Pliny Fisk (1792-1825)

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Parsons, Levi (1792-1822)

American missionary to the Near East

Born into a pastor’s family in Goshen, Massachusetts, Parsons manifested unusual piety in his youth and early felt a missionary call. He graduated from Middlebury College (1814) and from Andover Theological Seminary (1817) and was ordained by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions as a missionary in 1817. For two years he served as an effective missions promoter, soliciting contributions and organizing Palestine Societies, particularly among young people, for the support of a mission to be based in Jerusalem. The millennial hope of Israel’s conversion was widespread and sometimes took surprising forms: a group of New York Indians gave Parsons $5.87 and sent a message “to their forefathers in Jerusalem.” In a farewell service at Park Street Church, Boston, Parsons and his companion Pliny Fisk were given a generous mandate: Two great questions were to be ever in their minds, “What good can be done, and by what means?” for Jews, pagans, Mohammedans, and people in Egypt, Syria, Persia, Armenia, or other countries which they might investigate. Fisk and Parsons sailed in November 1819, arrived at Smyrna in January 1820, and went to the island of Scio, where they studied modern Greek. Then they toured Asia Minor, visiting the “seven churches of Asia” noted in the Book of Revelation, and distributing tracts and Testaments. At the end of 1820 Parsons went on to Jerusalem, the first Protestant missionary to enter with the intention of making that city his permanent base. He visited around the city, distributed tracts and Bibles, and talked with people from many places. His reports received much attention in America. In May 1821 Parsons left for Smyrna, suffering a serious illness en route, rejoined Fisk, and with him started again for Jerusalem via Egypt. At Alexandria, Parsons again took sick and died there.

David M. Stowe, “Parsons, Levi,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 517.

Parsons, Levi. Memoir of Rev. Levi Parsons, First Missionary to Palestine from the United States: Containing Sketches of his Early Life and Education, His Missionary Labours in this Country, in Asia Minor and Judea, with an Account of his Last Sickness and Death. 2d ed. Also Extracts from a Farewell Address Delivered Before “The Society of Enquiry upon the Subject of Missions,” at Andover, September, 1817. Edited by Rev. Daniel O. Morton. Hartford: Cooke & Co. and Packard & Butler, 1830.

Pliny Fisk (1792-1825)

Son of Ebenezer and Sarah (Barnard) Fisk,  he was born in Shelburne, Massachusetts, on June 24, 1792.

After preparing for College with Rev. Moses Halleck, Fisk entered Middlebury in the Fall of 1807. After graduating from Middlebury College in August 1814, Fisk studied theology with Rev. Thomas Packard of Shelburne, Vermont. He was licensed to preach by the Franklin Association of Congregational ministers in 1815 and for eight months served as pastor in Wilmington, Vermont, where he established a Sabbath school and a Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Missionary Association. In the Fall of 1815, he entered Andover Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in September 1818.

That same month, the Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), appointed Fisk to the first Palestine Mission.  In November 1818, he was ordained in the Tabernacle Church, Salem, MA. Before taking on the Palestine Mission, however, he served for a year as Agent of the ABCFM in Georgia and South Carolina. In November, 1819, Fisk sailed for Palestine with his Middlebury classmate Levi Parsons. Between 1820-23, Fisk carried out his mission in Smyrna and Egypt.  He deeply mourned the death of his companion Levi Parsons in early 1822, and took over his mission in Egypt. Fisk moved on to perform his mission in Jerusalem from 1823-1825. Fisk died on October 23, 1825 in Beirut.


Image credit: Frontispiece from Memoir of the Rev. Pliny Fisk, A.M. : late missionary to Palestine. Boston, 1827.