[Samuel Wells]. American sinologist, born at Utica, NY, on the 22nd of September 1812; graduated at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1832, and went to China in the following year as a printer in the service of the American Board of Foreign Missions. He was for several years assistant editor on the Chinese Repository; completed the printing of Medhurst’s Dictionary; and translated the books of Genesis and Matthew into Japanese. He was interpreter to Commodore Perry on his expedition to Japan in 1853–54; became secretary and interpreter to the first United States legation to China (1862); and assisted in many other diplomatic services in China and Japan. Among the valuable works that he published are Easy Lessons in Chinese (1842); The Chinese Commercial Guide (5th ed., 1863); The Middle Kingdom (1848, 1883); and a Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect (1856). He resigned his commission in 1875 and returned to the United States, where he accepted a lectureship on the Chinese language and literature in Yale University. He was for some time president of the American Oriental Society, and in 1881 was elected president of the American Bible Society. He died in New Haven, CT, on the 16th of February 1884.
