Henry Harris Jessup

He graduated from Yale in 1851 and from Union Theological Seminary in 1855 at which point he was officially ordained; he immediately entered the foreign-missionary service of the Presbyterian church.

[1] He spent his first four years of service in Tripoli, Lebanon, devoting much time to leaning Arabic at which he proved extremely deft.

Jessup served as the acting pastor for the Syrian Church of Beirut and superintendent of its school for thirty years, teaching almost any grade.

Serving and teaching in Beirut tirelessly, he refused a professorship at Union Seminary in 1857, a position as secretary of the Presbyterian Board in 1870, and the post of United States minister to Persia in 1883.

Jessup also authored numerous books about Syrian history, which culminated in the work for which he is best known, Fifty-Three Years in Syria published in 1910, a two-volume memoir and historical account of his life there.