Brinton.l ^ ^^ [February 4, 



was one of nine children, and his parents were in humble circum- 

 stances, but industrious and respected. His father was at one time 

 a tanner, and subsequently a small farmer. jSTecessarily, therefore, 

 his early education was limited. 



When a well grown lad he was taken into the family of Mr. Joseph 

 Woodbridge, of his native town, from whom he received some instruc- 

 tion in Latin and Greek, and with whom he afterward read law. In 

 1814 he was admitted to the bar, and practiced a few years with suc- 

 cess in Stockbridge and Sheffield, Mass. 



His father though a moral was not a religious man, and it seems to 

 have been only after he reached manhood that Mr. Byington became, 

 as he expressed it, "a subject of divine grace." He then resolved to 

 forsake the bar and devote himself to missionary life. With this 

 object in view he entered the theological school at Andover, Mass., 

 where he studied Hebrew and theology, and was licensed to preach, 

 September, 1819. At this time he hoped to go to the Armenians in 

 Turkey. But Providence had prepared for him another and an even 

 more laborious field. 



For about a year he preached in various churches in Massachusetts, 

 awaiting some opportunity for missionary labor. Toward the close 

 of the summer of 1819, a company of twenty or twenty-five persons 

 left Hampshire county, Mass., under the direction of the American 

 Board of Missions, to go by land to the Choctaw nation, then resident 

 in Mississippi. They passed through Stockbridge, in September, and 

 were provided with a letter from the Board, asking Mr. Byington to 

 take charge of them, and pilot them to their destination. He was 

 ready at a few hours' notice. 



The company journeyed by land to Pittsburgh, where they procured 

 flat boats, and floated down the Ohio and Mississippi to a point near 

 the mouth of the Yalobusha river, whence a land journey of two hun- 

 dred miles brought them to their destination. 



Thus commenced Mr. Byington's missionary life among the Choc- 

 taws. It continued for nearly fifty years, and resulted, with the 

 blessing of Providence and the assistance of some devoted co-work- 

 ers in the Nation, especially the Eev. A. Wright and the Bev. Cy- 

 rus Kingsbury, in redeeming tlie nation from drunkenness, ignor- 

 ance and immorality, to sobriety, godliness, and civilization. There 

 are no lives which in the eyes of the philanthropist are more worthy of 

 admiration, or more deserving of record than those of such men, who 

 not only rescue thousands of individuals from spiritual and physical 

 degradation, but preserve with enlightened care the only memorials 

 of whole nations. 



For throughout his missionary life Mr. Byington appreciated the 

 value which a knowledge of the language and traditions of the Choc- 

 taws would have to scholars. From his arrival among them, there- 



