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{{Short description|American Congregational missionary}}{{for multi|the Civil War general|Cyrus Hamlin (general)|the Yale professor|Cyrus Hamlin (professor)}}

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| birth_place = Waterford, Maine, US190081df=y}}| death_place = Portland, Maine, US}}(File:Cyrus Hamlin, founder of Robert College, Constantinople - Munroe Cemetery - Lexington, MA - 20200425 113100.jpg|thumb|Cyrus Hamlin's grave in Munroe Cemetery, 2020)Cyrus Hamlin (January 5, 1811 – August 8, 1900)BOOK, 1900, Leonard, John. W., WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA; A Biographical Dictionary of Living Men and Women of the United States 1899-1900, 1, A.N. Marquis & Company, Chicago, 306,weblink September 1, 2018, Internet Archive, was an American Congregational missionary, co-founder of Robert College, and the father of A. D. F. Hamlin.BOOK, Wright, Jr., Walter L., Malone, Dumas, Dumas Malone, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 8 (Grinnell-Hibbard), 1932, Hamlin, Cyrus,weblink 195–196, September 1, 2018, Internet Archive,

Biography

Hamlin was born in Waterford, Maine and grew up on his family's farm estate. At sixteen, he entered an apprenticeship as a silversmith and jeweler in Portland, Maine before deciding to enter the ministry.BOOK,weblink Hamlin, Cyrus, My Life and Times, 1893, 47, He first attended Bridgton Academy before heading to college. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1834 and from Bangor Theological Seminary in 1837. The Hamlins were a prominent nineteenth-century Maine family which also produced a Vice President of the United States (Hannibal Hamlin) and at least two Civil War generals, one of whom was also named Cyrus Hamlin.He promptly left the United States in 1838 as a missionary under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, arriving in the Ottoman Empire in January 1839. Hamlin helped found Bebek Seminary in 1840 as part of his outreach to Armenians.My Life and Times, p. 479-484. Hamlin established a workshop at Bebek to teach his students marketable trades, to help alleviate their severe poverty.My Life and Times, p. 257 From this workshop sprung a baking business, by which Hamlin became the primary provider of bread to the British Army hospital in Istanbul during the Crimean War.My Life and Times, p. 324-329 It was during this period that Hamlin became acquainted with Florence Nightingale.My Life and Times, p. 332-336 While the workshop and bakery were controversial to the American Board, the funds earned by Hamlin's enterprises helped build thirteen Protestant Armenian churches in Turkey.My Life and Times, p. 372In 1860, he began the work of establishing Robert College in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire. After years of unsuccessfully lobbying the Ottoman authorities for permission to build the school, Hamlin was eventually granted an imperial order granting permission for the school to be built and permitting it to be under American (United States) protection and fly the flag of the United States. The school opened its doors on May 15, 1863.My Life and Times, p. 448-469 Hamlin served as its president until an unfortunate conflict in 1876, which forced his return to the United States where he later served as professor of dogmatic theology at Bangor Theological Seminary.He was elected president of Middlebury College in Vermont in 1880. His term was short, lasting only until 1885. However, Hamlin's guidance brought the College back from the brink of collapse and began a recovery process that would ultimately lead to unprecedented growth in the early years of the 20th Century. Hamlin resolved severe disciplinary issues inherited from his predecessor and personally contracted critical upgrades to the physical plant. However, the most significant event of Hamlin's administration—one that would prove key in maintaining Middlebury's stability later on—was the college's decision to accept women in 1883. Hamlin was seventy-four by 1885 when he unsurprisingly retired.BOOK, Stameshkin, David M., The Town's College: Middlebury College 1800-1915, Middlebury College Press, 1985, He published Among the Turks (1878) and My Life and Times (1893).BOOK, Hamlin, Cyrus, 1877, Among the Turks, American Tract Society, New York, 1,weblink 20 March 2016, Internet Archive, BOOK, Hamlin, Cyrus, 1893, My Life and Times, The Pilgrim Press, Chicago, 5,weblink 20 March 2016, via Internet Archive Hamlin Hall at Boğaziçi University (formerly part of Robert College), as well as Hamlin Hall in Middlebury College's Freeman International Center are named after him.For many years, he lived in Lexington, Massachusetts. He is buried in Lexington's Munroe Cemetery.

Notes

{{Reflist}}{{Protestant missions to the Middle East}}{{Middlebury College presidents}}{{Authority control}}