Elias Riggs

Elias Riggs (November 19, 1810 – January 17, 1901) was an American Presbyterian missionary and linguist born in New Providence, New Jersey.[1][2][3] During his missionary activities in the Ottoman Empire he contributed greatly to the Bulgarian National Revival. He organized with Albert Long the first translation (by Neofit Rilski), and worked on editing, printing and dissemination of a translation of the Bible into modern Bulgarian.[4][5][6] In 1844 he published the first Grammar of the modern Bulgarian language. Riggs did research on Chaldee Language, and also guided the translation of the Bible into modern Armenian language.[2][7]

Elias Riggs

The government and church of newly independent Greece originally opposed Riggs' mission, but later had to accept American and British Protestant activities among Christians other than Greeks. Riggs took part in negotiations identifying the then actual ethnic delimitation between Greeks and Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire, resulting in an approximate line drawn between Serres and Edessa in Macedonia north of which the Christian population was recognized as predominantly Bulgarian. Subsequently, the 1876 Constantinople Conference of the Great Powers confirmed that early delimitation in its more comprehensive definition of ethnic Bulgarian lands as of the late 19th century.[7]

Honour

Riggs Peak on Smith Island, South Shetland Islands is named after Elias Riggs.[8]

References
  1. Leonard, John. W., ed. (1900). WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA; A Biographical Dictionary of Living Men and Women of the United States 1899-1900 (1 ed.). Chicago: A.N. Marquis & Company. p. 606. Retrieved August 30, 2018 – via Internet Archive.
  2. Wright Jr., Walter L. (1935). "Riggs, Elias". In Malone, Dumas (ed.). Dictionary of American Biography. 15 (Platt-Roberdeau). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 602–603. Retrieved April 13, 2018 – via Internet Archive.
  3. Doğan, Mehmet Ali. "Elias Riggs and the Missionary Activities of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in Greece (1832-1838)", International Review of Turkology, Volume IV - N. 8, Summer 2011. Accessed September 10, 2015. "The second son of a Presbyterian clergyman, Elias Riggs was born at New Providence, New Jersey, on November 19, 1810, the year in which the ABCFM was established."
  4. Wiener, Leo (February 1898). "America's Share in the Regeneration of Bulgaria (1840-1859)". Modern Language Notes. 13 (2): 33–41. doi:10.2307/2918140. JSTOR 2918140. Retrieved January 4, 2020 – via Internet Archive.
  5. Hamlin, Cyrus (1877). Among the Turks (1 ed.). New York: American Tract Society. pp. 261–262. Retrieved 1 September 2018 – via Internet Archive.
  6. Washburn, George (1909). Fifty Years in Constantinople and Recollections of Robert College (1 ed.). Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. pp. 65, 276. Retrieved August 30, 2018 – via Internet Archive.
  7. Georgi Genov. American Elias Riggs and his contribution to the Bulgarian National Revival Archived 2008-05-03 at the Wayback Machine. Historical Archives. Sofia, Issue 9-10, November 2000 - May 2001. (in Bulgarian)
  8. "Riggs Peak", SCAR Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica, retrieved 30 August 2018
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