Son of Ebenezer and Sarah (Barnard) Fisk, Pliny Fisk (1792-1825) was born in Shelburne, Massachusetts, on June 24, 1792.

After preparing for College with Rev. Moses Halleck, Fisk entered Middlebury in the Fall of 1807. After graduating from Middlebury College in August 1814, Fisk studied theology with Rev. Thomas Packard of Shelburne, Vermont. He was licensed to preach by the Franklin Association of Congregational ministers in 1815 and for eight months served as pastor in Wilmington, Vermont, where he established a Sabbath school and a Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Missionary Association. In the Fall of 1815, he entered Andover Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in September 1818.

That same month, the Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), appointed Fisk to the first Palestine Mission.  In November 1818, he was ordained in the Tabernacle Church, Salem, MA. Before taking on the Palestine Mission, however, he served for a year as Agent of the ABCFM in Georgia and South Carolina. In November, 1819, Fisk sailed for Palestine with his Middlebury classmate Levi Parsons. Between 1820-23, Fisk carried out his mission in Smyrna and Egypt.  He deeply mourned the death of his companion Levi Parsons in early 1822, and took over his mission in Egypt. Fisk moved on to perform his mission in Jerusalem from 1823-1825. Fisk died on October 23, 1825 in Beirut.

Image credit: Frontispiece from Memoir of the Rev. Pliny Fisk, A.M. : late missionary to Palestine. Boston, 1827.