AMERICAN WALDENSIAN AID SOCIETY:

This organization, having its headquarters at 213 West Seventy-sixth Street, New York City, was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York May, 1906, "To collect funds and apply the same to the aid of the Waldenaian Church in Italy and elsewhere, in its evangelistic, institutional, and educational work .... and to arouse and maintain interest throughout the United States in the work of said Church and otherwise to aid the said Waldenaian Church." It is governed by a board of twentyfour directors, twelve of whom are chosen from New York City and vicinity and twelve from the various sections where branches are located.

The organization has now twenty-five branch societies in the various cities of the United States and Canada, affiliated with it, and twenty-two circles throughout the country, which are aiding in the work and will become legalized branches of the national organization.

The funds raised by the society pay the salaries of many of the Protestant pastors in Italy and aid in the construction of churches and schoolhouses. The primary training of the Italian in the ways and customs of this country has a very beneficial influence on the Italian immigrants coming to our shores. Through the Waldenses about' 100 Protestant Italian churches have been founded in America. The American Waldensian Aid Society is helping to support this reflex mission, and a bureau to care for the religious welfare of the incoming and outgoing Italian Protestants is now in contemplation as a department of this organization.

In Great Britain there is a similar organization with like purposes, which publishes as its organ A Yoke from Italy, a periodical under the editorship of Rev. James Gibson.

BARNUM, HERMAN NORTON: Congregationalist; b. at Auburn, N. Y., Dec. 5, 1826; d. at Harput (60 m. n.n.w. of Diarbekr), Turkish Armenia, May 20, 1910. He was educated at Amherst (B.A., 1852) and Andover Theological Seminary (1855), and after being missionary-at-large in Vermont in 1855-56 and traveling for a year (1857-58) became connected with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, with which he remained until his death. His main activity, apart from his general missionary duties, was teaching in Harput Theological Seminary and in Euphrates College, in the same city, and it was due in great measure to his firm attitude during the threatened Turkish massacres of Nov., 1895, that no actual harm came to the Armenians of Harpist.

BECKWITH, JOHN CHARLES: English sol dier and missionary to the Waldenses (q.v.); b. at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Oct. 2, 1789; d. at his villa,

La Torre, in the Piedmont valleys, July 19, 1882. He served in Denmark, Portugal, Spain, France, and the Netherlands, but at Waterloo he lost a leg, and, although promoted lieutenant-colonel, was debarred from active service, retiring in 1820 on half pay. In 1827 he chanced to look into a book on the Waldenses, and became so interested in them that he removed to Italy and took the villa-in which he resided for the remainder of his life. His two endeavors were to raise the educational standard of the Waldenses and to revive their uncompromising Protestantism, and to him is due the foundation of no less than 120 schools throughout the valleys of the Piedmont. In recognition of his services Charles Albert of Sardinia created him a knight of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus in 1848, two years after he had .been promoted major-general in the English service. His memory is still held in deep respect by the people whose condition he so successfully sought to elevate.

Bibliography: J. P. MeI11C General Beckwith: His L(fe and Labours among the Waldenses of Piedmont, London, 1873; DNB, iv. 89-90.