GOODELL, WILLIAM, o.o (1792-1867); a Congregational minister and missionary, b. at Templeton, Mass., educated at Phillips academy, Andover, Dartmouth college, and Andover theological seminary. Having been accepted as a missionary by the American board, he traveled from New England to Alabama as an agent for raising funds, and visited the missions among the Choctaws and Cherokees east of the Ilis• sissippi. At the close of 1822 he sailed for Malta, and thence the next year to Beyroot, where he aided in establishing a station which has become eminently important as the center of the Syrian mission. The year following he commenced the study of Armeno Turkish with the assistance of an ex-bishop of the Armenian church, Yakob Aga, and of a bishop, Dionysius Carabet, who afterwards joined the mission church. Thus uneon scionsly to himself he was preparing for his great work among the Armenian nation. In 1828, on account of threatened war between England and Turkey, the missionaries removed to Malta, where Mr. Goodell labored in preparing and printing books for the mission; until, in 1831, the way having been opeaed by the destruction of the Turkish Beet at Navarino, he went to Constantinople, where he commenced the Armeno-Turkish mission. During his missionary life lie and his equally devoted wife cheerfully
endured many trials and perils, and were compelled by fire, pestilence, political disturb ance, war, persecution, extortion, and governmental interference to pack up their house hold goods and move their residence 33 times in 29 years. Unconquerable in effort, courteous in manner, of ready tact and resistless wit, he acquired great influence over the intelligent nation for whose good he worked; and won the respect and confidence of European ambassadors, ecclesiastical dignitaries, Armenian bankers, and other lead ing omen. Those even who opposed his work were constrained to honor the worker. Few men equaled him in his wonderful power of dding good without giving offense, and of commending piety to the world. One of his chief labors was the translation of the Bible into Armeno-Turkish, in making and revising which he spent 20 years. In 1865, after 43 years of enthusiastic toil, he returned to the United States, and died in Philadelphia at the residence of his son.