Eli Smith Family Papers

Eli Smith was a prominent early missionary to the Middle East. The letters, journals, and writings in this collection document his important role in the designing of Arabic fonts and translation of the Scriptures into Arabic, his explorations of the Middle East, and his life and work in general. This collection is also valuable for its documentation of the life of Mehitable Butler Smith, Eli's third wife, who spent ten years in the Middle East. Her letters to her family in America provide regular, detailed descriptions of her daily life as missionary wife and mother during this early era.

Series V, Research Materials of Margaret Russell Leavy, contains notes and photocopies gathered by Mrs. Leavy in the process of her research on Eli Smith and his family. Included are some material copied or transcribed from the notable collection of Eli Smith Papers held at Harvard's Houghton Library. The repositories from which the photocopies and transcripts were obtained are noted on the materials donated by Mrs. Leavy. Some transcripts prepared by Mrs. Leavy of original letters held in the Yale Divinity Library have been interfiled with the originals in Series I. Series V concludes with drafts of the major work on Smith that Margaret Leavy was preparing. Two works by Margaret Leavy related to Eli Smith are in the Library's cataloged collection: Eli Smith and the Arabic Bible, Yale Divinity School Library Occasional Publication No. 4, (1993), and "Looking for the Armenians: Eli Smith's Missionary Adventures 1830-1831" published in Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 50 (Dec., 1992).