Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Fisk, Pliny

FISK, Pliny, missionary, b. in Shelburne, Mass., 24 June, 1792; d. in Beirut, Syria, 23 Oct., 1825. He was graduated at Middlebury college in 1814, and at Andover theological seminary in 1818. He was appointed, with Levi Parsons, by the American board, to the Palestine mission in 1818, and sailed from Boston for Smyrna, 3 Nov., 1819. After travelling extensively in Greece, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, he joined, in May, 1825, the mission already established at Beirut, and died there of fever in the following October. Mr. Fisk was eminently fitted to be a missionary in the east, as he preached in Italian, French, Greek, and Arabic. On the day of his death he completed an “English and Arabic Dictionary,” and wrote numerous papers for the “Missionary Herald.” A life of Pliny Fisk was published by Alvin Bond (Boston, 1828).—His niece, Fidelia, missionary, b. in Shelburne, Mass., 1 May, 1816; d. there, 9 Aug., 1864, was graduated at Mount Holyoke seminary in 1839, and subsequently taught there. In 1843 she resigned her post and went to Persia as a missionary among the Nestorians, where she labored fifteen years, much of the time as teacher in a female seminary. She was the first principal of the seminary at Oroomiah. In 1858 she returned to the United States with broken health. She published “Memorial of Mount Holyoke Seminary” and “Woman and her Saviour in Persia,” and at the time of her death was engaged in writing “Recollections of Mary Lyon” (Boston, 1866). See a memoir of Miss Fisk, by the Rev. Daniel T. Fiske, D. D., entitled “Faith working by Love” (1868).