Selah Merrill

She was the great granddaughter of Dr. Oliver Wadsworth Brewster,[8] who served in Col. John Brown's regiment in the American Revolutionary War and was the first physician in Becket, Massachusetts.

In 1915, his wife donated his Josephus collection to Yale University and promoted the posthumous publication of his New Comprehensive Dictionary of the Bible.

[9][10] During the last year of the American Civil War Merrill served as chaplain of the Forty-ninth United States colored infantry.

[11] He also opposed Jewish agricultural settlement in Palestine and shaped the views of the U.S. State Department on this matter.

[12] Merrill was a virulent anti-Semite and his views influenced the State Department's opposition to Jewish resettlement in Palestine at that time.