Levi Spaulding

Levi Spaulding (22 August 1791 – 18 June 1873) was an American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions missionary to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and he also led the team of American missionaries to choose Madura as a site for American Madura Mission, for Tamil people of South India.

He was an evangelist, hymnist, and published a Tamil dictionary and an English-Tamil dictionary.

He was born on 22 August 1791 in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, to Elisabeth and Phinehas Spaulding. He started his career as a farmer till the death of his father in 1809. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1815 and Andover Theological Seminary in the Tabernacle Church, Salem, Massachusetts, in 1818. He along with Henry Woodward, Fisk, and Miron Winslow were ordained by American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in 1818 and was married to Mary Christie in the same year.

As a missionary under ABCFM, he along with fellow-missionaries like John Scudder, the first medical missionary, sailed for Calcutta, India on 8 June 1819 from Boston and arrived Jaffna, Ceylon, on 1 December 1820. Upon his arrival at the mission station, he was initially placed at Manepay(spelt also as Manipay), where he served between 1821 and 1828; later, he served at Tellippalai(spelled also Tillipally) from 1828 and 1833.

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