He initially went to Constantinople as the treasurer of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, an early American Christian missionary organization and, in 1859, married Henrietta Loraine, the daughter of Robert College president Cyrus Hamlin. Washburn returned to the Andover Seminary to complete his education in 1862, and was ordained as a Congregational minister the next year. Being appointed as a missionary for the American Board of Commissioners in Constantinople, he returned to the city, and subsequently became professor of philosophy in Robert College.
Leaving Constantinople to pursue Christian work in New York City, he returned a year later at the request of Christopher Robert, founder of Robert College, and became acting president of the school between 1870 and 1877, replacing his father-in-law.[4][1] Washburn was appointed president in 1878, and retained his role until September 20, 1903.[4] He was an authority on the political questions of southeastern Europe. In 1876 he was instrumental, together with Dr. Albert Long, in sounding the first alarm and publicizing the Turkish massacres in Bulgaria.[7][8][9] During the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, in 1893, he delivered an address on Islam.[10] He contributed many articles regarding current affairs, history, and geology to English and American periodicals such as The Contemporary Review and the American Journal of Science. He was offered the role of the United States ambassador to Turkey, but denied it due to a potential conflict of interest relating to his missionary work.[4] He was also the Founder Principal of American College, Madurai.
He died at his home in Boston on February 15, 1915.[3][4]
Honors
The National Assembly of liberated Bulgaria at their first session in 1879 accorded him a vote of thanks in recognition of his service to the Bulgarian cause.[11][12]
^ abWright Jr., Walter L. (1936). "Washburn, George". In Malone, Dumas (ed.). Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. 19 (Troye-Wentworth). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 500–501. Retrieved August 3, 2016 – via Internet Archive.
^Chary, Frederick B. (2011). The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations: THE HISTORY OF BULGARIA. Santa Barbara, CA; Denver, CO; Oxford, England: Greenwood, An Imprint of ABC-Clio, LLC. p. 33.
"Calvert's Supposed Relics of Man in the Miocene of the Dardanelles". Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. XXII (2): 203–205. 1874. hdl:2027/hvd.32044092861582.
"Mohammedanism". The Message of the World Religions. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1898. pp. 65–85. Retrieved August 30, 2018 – via Internet Archive.
Washburn, George (January 1911). "Probable Influence of the Turkish Revolution on the Faith of Islam". The Journal of Race Development. 1 (3): 302–315. JSTOR29737866.
Wright Jr., Walter L. (1936). "Washburn, George". In Malone, Dumas (ed.). Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. 19 (Troye-Wentworth). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 500–501. Retrieved August 30, 2018 – via Internet Archive.
Bryce, Viscount (October 1914). "The Late Dr. George Washburn (From the Manchester Guardian )". Amherst Graduates' Quarterly. IV: 299–300. hdl:2027/mdp.39015075085533.
"Book Review: Fifty Years in Constantinople and Recollections of Robert College by George Washburn, D.D., LL.D. xxxi and 317 pp. and illustrations, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1909, $3". Bulletin of the American Geographical Society. 42 (7): 536–537. 1910. JSTOR199547.