I Got Intrigued (and did I!)

Getting intrigued, I think, is a special form of curiosity.

What happens when you read about three graves? To where is one led?

I read the following on page 179 of Volume 3 of Edward Robinsons (with Eli Smith) Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions: A Journal of Travels in the Years 1838 and 1852 regarding their visit to a section of the Mt. Zion cemetery:

We now rode to the American cemetery...There are here but three graves of American; those of Dr Dodge and Mrs Thomson, missionaries ; and that of Prof. Fiske of Amherst College, who died here in May, 1847.

Who were they? What did they accomplish? 

And to where and who would this lead me?

I checked this 1872 book. According to this book, the Thomsons and Dodges arrived as missionaries in Beirut in 1833 and spent over a decade in Lebanon.

The Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Volume 7, p. 583, Dodge and Thomson had proceeded to Jerusalem from the Lebanon in 1834 and Mrs. Thomson died of brain fever on July 22, 1834 following a siege of their residence. Dodge, who arrived in Jerusalem in early 1835, and founded the Jewish Mission in the city. He died there on June 28, 1835.

William McClure Thomson spent 25 years in Syria and Lebanon as a Protestant missionary, only the eighth American Protestant missionary to arrive in the area. We read that

At a Beirut Mission Meeting on 23 January 1862 he proposed the establishment of a college with Daniel Bliss as its President. The Syrian Protestant College was established in 1866 with 16 students. This college was to evolve into the American University of Beirut

He was one of the first outsiders to arrive at Tzfat after the terrible 1837 earthquake and extended assistance to the Jews there. His book, The Land and the Book, almost 800 pages in length, became quite popular, a bestseller, and over the next forty years it was only outsold by Uncle Tom's Cabin in America.

Being on the subject of missionaries and death, let us recall the events of 1859-1860 in Lebanon:

The events began in the Beit Miri section of Lebanon when a minor quarrel developed in the summer of 1859 between two boys, a Maronite and a Druse, over the ownership of a chicken...Feelings smoldered until the following April when there was another outbreak.Some contend that the Maronite clergy, who were mostly of peasant origin, were the instigators of the uprising. "Verbalmissiles" and rumor put the situation out of hand, with the Druse calling on their coreligionists in Hauran for help. The violence escalated and there was a tremendous loss of lives'? At Deir el Kamr, near the scene of the original quarrel, some 2,600 Maronite men were slaughtered within the church walls. Fighting swept from one mountain village to another. The fighting spread and now included attacks on and by all Christians. Indiscriminate killing and pillaging followed. Hardly a house in Zahleh remained standing.outrages were beyond even his expectations. International jealousies were partially to blame for the riot. The French wished to establish a beachhead in Lebanon by supporting Catholics in general and the Maronites in particular. The British viewed with disfavor France's moves and favored the Druse and Protestants. Russia, protector of the Roum (Orthodox), could still hope to take back Constantinople and maybe Turkey which was determined to crush the might of local chieftians in Lebanon. Muslims perceived of themselves in decline and under Christian European pressure...In Damascus...a city of about 110,000,Christians numbered about 25,000,15,000Jews..On Sunday, July 8, a series of insults were heard; on Monday the attacks began; and on Tuesday the terror mounted. By the time the news reached Beirut three days later the worst had happened. The estimated loss of lives in Damascus vary from 5,000 to 8,000 killed. The Ottoman soldiers stood by idly; the mobs ruled in anarchy.

And we meet Thomson again:

Events of the war were copiously detailed by eyewitnesses. American proteges trekked over rocks and hills to the safety of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Bliss at Suk el-Gharb. Others were sheltered in school buildings. Abeih received its share of refugees. Looking over their shoulders, they saw columns of smoke envelop what once had been homes in their villages.  There is Mr. Bird's account of 30 Syrian Protestants rescued from Ain Zehalteh, neighboring Deir el Kamr and the saving of a "terrified Syrian pastor" just before Hauran Druse broke in on him. A thousand women and children had fled Merj Aiyun to Sidon where the Reverends Eddy and Ford, well-known workers in that community, took the refugees aboard English ships to Beirut. Dr. Thomson later remarked with dismay: "Brethren, the work of forty years is destroyed, and if we are spared, we must begin again."

Missionaries sometimes have amazing experiences:

Bliss (the above-mentioned Daniel)...(d)uring relief disbursements of money and clothing, the timely "whispered" plea of a woman who knew that in a nearby house was a mother and her two daughters without any clothing at all, led Bliss to take three dresses to the house. A bare arm "to the shoulder" reached out to grasp the needed garments. Later, as he rode away, he saw three women standing with uplifted hands. He heard them exclaim: "God bless the English and the Americans. God bless the missionaries."

Incidentally, Bliss’ granddaughter married a Cleveland Dodge who provided financial support for Woodrow Wilson. His one favor that he asked was in 1917, when war with Germany seemed inevitable. He requested of Wilson to keep the United States from declaring war on Turkey and Bulgaria. Later, the missionaries in Syria and Lebanon heavily influenced the King-Crane Commission against Zionism. But William Blackstone, acting at the 1916 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church at the behest of Louis Brandeis, proved an offset to that (p. 92 here) reissuing his 1891 Memorial.

The 1891 Blackstone Memorial read, in part:

Why shall not the powers which under the treaty of Berlin, in 1878, gave Bulgaria to the Bulgarians and Servia to the Servians now give Palestine back to the Jews?…These provinces, as well as Romania, Montenegro, and Greece, were wrested from the Turks and given to their natural owners. Does not Israel as rightfully belong to the Jews?

Later, in October that year, Blackstone stated that the general "law of dereliction" did not apply to the Jews in regard to Palestine:

for they never abandoned the land. They made no treaty; they did not even surrender. They simply succumbed, after the most desperate conflict, to the overwhelming power of the Romans

Once again, I express thanks to Christian Zionism.

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