The American Board and the Oorfa Activities of Missionary Corinna Shattuck

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission, founded in Connecticut in 1810, briefly known as ABCFM or the American Board, was the largest American Protestant missionary organization active in the Ottoman State and the US in the nineteenth century. ABCFM was the first organized missionary society in the US and was founded with the goal to spread Christianity worldwide. The American Board missionary activities in Anatolia were divided into three operating missions as "Western Turkey Mission," "Central Turkey Mission" and "Eastern Turkey Mission" at the annual meeting held in Harpoot in 1860. To make administration easy, the missions were divided into the stations, and stations were d ivided into the outer stations. The writings of the missionaries today are considered as the fundamental sources for the history of the places where the Board operated. Therefore, this study gives information about the activities of ABCFM in Ottoman State and Turkey and concentrates on American missionary Corinna Shattuck’s activities in Urfa to emphasize the importance of missionary studies on education and the importance of the Board archives for historical analysis. Within the study, a general reading of Corinna Shattuck’s works and her representation from an American point of view is done to highlight her role in the Armenian uprising of the 1895 and its aftermath. Within the analysis of Corinna Shattuck, primarily her representation in Emily Clough Peabody’s missionary biography entitled Corinna Shattuck: Missionary Heroine, is used. Of course, the reason of highlighting Shattuck’s heroism, her work for the blind, her Christian faith and detailing the great difficulties she had overcome, has a reason. Her life story is used to inspire other American missionaries, and her narratives are used to legitimize the claims of the Armenians. Therefore, Corinna Shattuck and the school for the blind, she has established within the missionary activities of the American Board, deserve special attention and are among the main facts to be investigated. Like other missionaries, Corinna Shattuck through religious works, or by social or economic activities, has affected the Armenians and encouraged them to riot against the Ottoman government. As a result, her missionary activities in education in the region helped in quickening the dissolution of Ottoman State