Daniel Poor

Daniel Poor (27 June 1789, Massachusetts, United States - 3 February 1855, Manipai, Jaffna) was a Presbyterian missionary and educator, founder of the first English School in Jaffna, Sri Lanka.

Poor graduated at Phillips Academy, Andover in 1805 and Dartmouth in 1811, and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1814 at the age of twenty-five. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church at Newburyport, Massachusetts in June 1815.

He married Susan Bulfinch of Salem, Massachusetts on October 9, 1815 and two weeks after their wedding left for Ceylon on October 23, 1815. He visited with Rev. William Bentley of Salem, a great linguist, who was not impressed with Poor's intentions or abilities. The Poors were accompanied by two more missionary couples James Richards and his wife, as well as Benjamin C. Meigs and his wife and a young bachelor clergyman named Edward Warren. They arrived in Colombo on March 22, 1816 and moved to the Jaffna Peninsula thereafter. The Poors and Edward Warren settled in Tellippalai on 16 October 1816.

Poor pioneered the English education service to Tellippalai and its adjoining villages is magnanimous and admirable and to be remembered for ever by the poor, middle and the upper class folks of the region who had an advantage of high-standard education over the other rural areas of the Jaffna peninsula in the 19th century.

Though the American missionaries came with dedication and fanaticism to spread Christianity, they did not confine themselves strictly and fully to evangelism alone; they were keen to impart a liberal education. Immediately after landing in Colombo in 1813 Rev. Samuel Newell got a charter from the British governor to impart a primary education service to the public in the parched north. They were forbidden to engage in higher education. But, in contrast to the American missionaries, the Methodist missionaries, stationed in the Jaffna fort, took about four years to comprehend that they could not convert natives to Christianity without schools and in 1817 Rev. James Lynch applied for permission to their Head Office in England to establish schools. But Poor was able to commence his education service at Tellippalai without any impediment in 1816.

...
Wikipedia