WORCESTER, Samuel Austin. American missionary and translator: b. Worcester, Mass., 19 Jan. 1798; d. Park Hill, Indian Territory, 20 April 1868. His father was a Congregational minister and also a printer. His parents moved to Vermont during his childhood. He was edu cated in the University of Vermont (of which his uncle, Rev. Samuel Austin, was president), %here he was graduated in 1819. He was graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1823 and in 1825 was ordained to the min istry and shortly afterward entered the service of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, being assigned to duty at Brainerd Mission in East Tennessee. In 1827 be was transferred to New Echota, Ga., which was the Cherokee 'capital. He aided in the establishment of the Cherokee Plrnir, which was the first paper to be printed in the Chero kee language and alphabet. In March 1829 he was arrested by the Georgia authorities because of his refusal to take a special oath of allegi ance to that State — an obligation which had been devised and prescribed for the avowed purpose of discouraging missionary work among the Indians. He was released but was re arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to the State penitentiary for the term of four years. Clad in the garb of a felon, he was confined at hard labor until January 1833, though the Supreme Court of the United States had de cided nearly a year before that his imprison ment was illegal. He then returned to Brain erd where he was beyond thejurisdiction of Georgia. In 1835 he moved to the Indian Ter ntory, whither the Western Cherokees had re moved from Arkansas in 1829. After visiting the Dwight Mission he tarried for a season at Union Mission, where be set up the first printing establishment in the Indian Territory.
In December 1836 he settled at Park Hill, five auks south of the present town of Tahlequah, where his mission was established and where he labored during the remainder of his life. In addition to his work as a preacher and teacher Mr. Worcester devoted himself to the task of translating various works into the Cherokee language, to be printed and published at his Park Hill Mission. The mission press also printed many books and pamphlets for the missionaries laboring among the Creek, Semi nole, Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. His own translations included large portions of the Bible, tracts, hymn-books, school books and the Cherokee Almanac, printed in English and Cherokee, with astronomical calculations for the meridian of Fort Gibson. In translating the Bible he rendered the text from the onginal Hebrew directly into Cherokee without the medium of either the Greek Latin or English versions. Prior to his removal to the West he had laboriously prepared manuscripts for a and a dictionary of the Cherokee ry ge, both of which were unfortunately lost when the steamboat transporting his personal effects was sunk while ascending the Arkansas River. He was greatly revered among the Cherokees by whom he was known as 'The Messenger.' Consult Mooney, James, 'Myths of the Cherokee' (in 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology); Wilson, Removal of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia' ; Benson, Henry C., 'Life Among the Choctaws' ; and Drake, Samuel G., 'The Abo riginal Races of North America.'