Overview of Chapter 1:

WAS was of the 8th generation of Shedds in America, Daniel Shed being the first to come to Braintree MA near 1640. She says that one of this name was in the Boston Tea Party (and I forward that name to you). She says that there were 52 Shedds in the Revolutionary War!

In 1829 the grandfather of WAS (Rev Henry Shedd), a graduate of Dartmouth and Androver Seminary went to Rutland, VT and then to Central Ohio as home missionaries. He worked on two great questions - Abolition and Temperance.  He would bar communion to a slave holder. Three of his sons served in the Union Army.

Life was hard in the new country (the Ohio area) and his wife died leaving two boys Charles and John, John Haskell Shedd was WAS's father and he lived with foster parents. His education was received in a log schoolhouse. He then went to Marietta College where he graduated second. He married Sarah Jane Dawes - she was descended from William Dawes who road with Paul Revere that night. John decided on the ministry and went to Lane Seminary in Cincinnati and did a third year at Androver. John Haskell Shedd and his wife Sarah Dawes Shedd sailed for Persia shortly after graduating in 1859. They were sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to the Nestorian Mission at Urumia. This is where William Ambrose Shedd was born. [Today Persia is Iran; Urumia is in the northwest side of Iran, near Iraq; it is near Mt Ararat where Turkey, Persia (Iran) and Russia (is it still Russia?) meet.] Urumia is the traditional birthplace of Zoroaster - also known as fire worshippers - they believed in a coming battle between good and evil. [I did a research paper on Zoroasterism when I was in high school.] Urumia Lake is a great salt sea nearly 100 miles in length and 40 to 50 miles in length.

The Mission field extended westward to Mosul on the Tigris near the site of Nineveh; this territory was then partly in Persia and partly in Turkey. We know today that Mosul is in Iraq [Iraq as a country was formed at the end of WWI - the lines were drawn by Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia I have heard.  There are those who think that Iraq is messed up because these lines were not drawn according to tribal affiliations - Sunni, Shite and Turk.] Wherever there were Nestorians the missionary found a parish.

Here is a link about Lake Urmira. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Urmia

Here is a link about Persia.  http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/asbook05.html

And if you want detail about Persia here is a complete course.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persia

Who were the Nestorians? See http://www.nestorian.org/ and http://lexicorient.com/e.o/nestorian.htm

So William Ambrose Shedd's father and mother move to Persia to establish a Mission to the Nestorian in what is now Iran/Iraq. He will be born there 6 years later in 1865 - just before our Civil War was over.

Updated 3/10/06