Mr. Hebard and Miss Williams were united in marriage in October, 1836. Mr. Hebard had then the care of the seminary, and the girls' school was taught by Mrs. Hebard and Mrs. Dodge. The latter was subsequently married to the Rev. J. D. Paxton, a clergyman from the United States, then on a visit to Syria.
The mission, as early as 1836, became sensible of a serious deficiency in their Arabic type. As it did not conform to the most approved standard of Arabic caligraphy, it did not meet the popular taste. Mr. Smith therefore took pains to collect models of the characters in the best manuscripts. These were lost in his shipwreck, but he afterwards replaced them at Constantinople, to the number of two hundred; so varied, that the punches formed for them would make not far from a thousand matrices. These he placed in the hands of Mr. Hallock, the missionary printer at Smyrna, who possessed great mechanical ingenuity, and was entirely successful in cutting the punches. The type was cast at Leipzig by Tauchnitz. Thus a really great and important work, without which the press could not have been domesticated among the many millions to whom the Arabic is vernacular, was brought to a successful issue.
The disastrous shipwreck of Mr. and Mrs. Smith on their way from Beirût to Smyrna, has been already mentioned. The voyage was undertaken chiefly for the benefit of Mrs. Smith's health; but the exposures consequent on the shipwreck, extending through twenty-eight days until their arrival at Smyrna, aggravated her consumptive tendencies, and hastened her passage to the grave. She died on the thirtieth of September, 1836, at the age of thirty-four. The closing scene is described by her husband. "Involuntary groans were occasionally muttered in her convulsions. These, as we were listening to them with painful sympathy, once, to our surprise, melted away into musical notes; and for a moment, our ears were charmed with the full, clear tones of the sweetest melody. No words were articulated, and she was evidentally unconscious of everything about her. It seemed as if her soul was already joining in the songs of heaven, while it was yet so connected with the body as to command its unconscious sympathy. Not long after, she again opened her eyes in a state of consciousness. A smile of perfect happiness lighted up her emaciated features. She looked deliberately around upon different objects in the room, and then fixed upon me a look of the tenderest affection. …. Her frequent prayers that the Saviour would meet her in the dark valley, have already been mentioned. By her smile, she undoubtedly intended to assure us that she had found him. Words she could not utter to express what she felt. Life continued to struggle with its last enemy until twenty minutes before eight o'clock; when her affectionate heart gradually ceased to beat, and her soul took its final departure to be forever with the Lord."1
1 A Memoir of Mrs. Sarah Lanman Smith was given to the public by her brother, Edward W. Hooker, D. D., in 1837, pp. 407.
In the winter and spring of 1838, an opportunity was afforded Mr. Smith to perform a very useful service as the associate of Dr. Edward Robinson, in his celebrated "Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions."1 The aid was essential to the full success of the enterprise, from Mr. Smith's acquaintance with the Arabs and their language, and it was cheerfully rendered by the missionary, and assented to by the mission and by the officers of the Board at home. Mr. Smith had been hopeful of being able to visit the Hauran, and to recover the more important facts lost in the shipwreck, but the troubled state of the country prevented. Joining Dr. Robinson in Egypt, he travelled with him from Cairo to Suez; thence to Sinai and Jerusalem, by way of Akabah; then to Bethel, the Dead Sea, and the valley of the Jordan. At Jerusalem, they attended the annual meeting of the Syria mission.
1 Mr. Smith rendered a similar service, during a part of Dr. Robinson's second tour in 1852, in a portion of the same regions.
The Rev. Messrs. Elias R. Beadle and Charles S. Sherman, and their wives, joined the mission this year.