Foreign Mission School

The Foreign Mission School was an educational institution which operated between 1817 and 1826 in Cornwall, Connecticut. It was established by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The ABCFM was focused on sending missionaries to non-Christian cultures, mostly overseas. The school was intended to educate students of non-Christian cultures, including Native Americans, in Christianity and Western culture so that they might become missionaries and emissaries to their own peoples. It had students from Hawaii, India and East Asia, in addition to those of Native American tribes primarily from east of the Mississippi River. History The school was called a seminary, "for the purpose of educating youths of Heathen nations, with a view to their being useful in their respective countries", according to Jedidiah Morse. The school was established in the last few months of 1816, and opened in May 1817. The first principal was Edwin Welles Dwight (1789–1841). After the first year, Dwight was replaced by Reverend Herman Daggett, who ran the school for the next six years. Dwight was a distant cousin of the Yale president in 1817, Timothy Dwight IV. Daggett was nephew of Naphtali Daggett, who had been president of Yale College.