The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions appointed its first men to the Turkish empire in 1818. Five years afterward (1823) the Board's Syrian Mission was established at Beirut, where shortly two Armenian ecclesiastics were received into the Mission church as the first-fruits of American missionary labors in Turkey. In 1831 William Goodell, of the Syrian Mission established himself at Constantinople, where he was joined the following year by a new recruit, Henry Dwight. These men were under instructions to devote themselves to Armenian work in the Turkish capital. Thus was begun the Board's Armenian Mission.