Frank Knight Sanders

He was born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka to American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions missionary parents: Rev. Marshall Danworth Sanders (1822-1872), the first president of Jaffna College and his first wife Georgiana Knight (died 1868), daughter of Rev. Asher Knight.^[1] Two of his brothers were also ABCFM missionaries: William Henry Sanders (1856-1947) Benguella in Angola and Charles Sylvester (1854-1906) in Anitab, Turkey.^[2]

In 1865 his parents returned to the US for a short stay and left him with his uncle.

He was prepared for college in a private academy in Lakeville and in the preparatory department of Ripon College from which he graduated in 1882.^[1] He sailed with ABCFM to Ceylon, where he became an instructor in Jaffna College from 1882 to 1886. In 1886 he returned to America and received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1889 and became instructor in Biblical Literature and Semitic Languages in Yale College until 1891.^[1] In 1891 he became the Woolsey Professor of Biblical Literature at Yale Divinity. In 1901 he became Professor of Biblical History and Archaeology and the second Dean of Yale Divinity School - he was ordained as a Congregational minister on January 7, 1902.^[3] In 1905 he resigned the deanship and became the secretary of the Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society at Boston, Mass. until 1908 when he became president of Washburn College.^[4] In 1914 he resigned the presidency and became Director of Missionary Preparation for the Foreign Missions Conference of North America until 1927 when he retired.^[4]

He married Edith Blackman on June 27, 1888, and they had three children.^[1][4]

Sanders died in Rockport, Massachusetts on February 20, 1933.^[4]