Justin Perkins

Justin Perkins (Holyoke, Massachusetts, March 5, 1805-Chicopee, Massachusetts, December 31, 1869) was an American Presbyterian missionary and linguist. He was the first citizen of the United States to reside in Iran, and he became known for his work among the people there as an "apostle to Persia".

He was born in the Ireland Parish of West Springfield, Massachusetts, in an area now within the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts. He was the son of William Perkins and Judith Clough Perkins, and a descendant of a John Perkins who arrived in Massachusetts in 1631 and eventually settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1633. He spent his early years on the farm. At the age of eighteen, he had a religious experience and enrolled at the Westfield Academy, going on to graduate with honors from Amherst College in 1829. He then spent a year teaching at the Amherst Academy, two years studying at the Andover Theological Seminary, and one year as a tutor at Amherst College, before being ordained a Presbyterian minister in the summer of 1833. At roughly the same time, on July 21, 1833, he married Charlotte Bass of Middlebury, Vermont, with whom he would eventually have seven children. Six of those children would die in Persia, including their daughter Judith, about whom Justin Perkins wrote the book "The Persian Flower: a memoir of Judith Grant Perkins of Oroomiah, Persia". Only one child, Henry Martyn Perkins, survived Persia and moved with his parents to America.

In September, 1833, he set sail for Persia as a missionary for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, his specific appointment being for the remaining members of the Assyrian Church of the East in northwestern Persia.

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