Roger Cumberland

Roger C. Cumberland (November 16, 1894 – June 12, 1938) was an American Presbyterian missionary who was killed while living in Duhok in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Cumberland was born on November 16, 1894, in La Verne, California. He served as a field artillery officer for a year between his junior and senior year of college, and enlisted to serve in the First World War in 1917, but the war ended before he was deployed. He graduated in 1919 from Occidental College in Los Angeles and then 1922 from McCormick Theological Seminary. He arrived in Iraq in April 1923 to work as a missionary. His work began with the East Persia Mission, from where he went to Mosul, and afterwards to Dohuk. His New York Times obituary noted that he "made long trips to the villages of tribesmen, lived with the people and established Christian centers among them."

His wife Harriet Gilbert Gunn, who he married in 1927, was the daughter of missionaries to the Philippines. They had two daughters. Cumberland considered himself a man of the American West. He is reported to have said, "The blood of the pioneer is in me. I love the frontier."

By 1926, Cumberland had bought a thousand acres of land, including the Assyrian village of Babillu, ten miles east of Duhok. The village reportedly cost $500.

It is possible to visit the house in Duhok where Cumberland lived.

Writings

Among Cumberland's published writings are the following, though his as-yet unpublished letters have also been much commented on by historians who have consulted them:

"The Kurds", The Moslem World (Apr 1926). "A Voice from Kurdistan", World Dominion (Apr 1927). "Assyrians in Iraq", World Dominion (Apr 1933).