Ann Hasseltine Judson

1789–1826AmericanBaptist missionary

The first American woman sent overseas as a missionary, who kept her husband alive through seventeen months in a Burmese death prison.

Summary

Ann Hasseltine Judson lived 1789–1826, and was American. This wing places Ann Hasseltine Judson in The Missionary Century, 1790–1910.

Lived 1789–1826, American.
Stood in The Missionary Century (1790–1910).
Hangs on The Missionaries.
Tradition: Baptist missionary.

The life

Ann Hasseltine married Adoniram Judson in February 1812 and sailed for Asia thirteen days later, the first American woman commissioned to go. Her father had let her go with a line people quoted for a century: he would not stand in the way of her doing good. In Burma she learned the language faster than her husband, taught women who had never been taught anything, and translated the Gospel of Matthew into Siamese, the first Scripture that language had.

When war broke out between Britain and Burma in 1824, Adoniram was chained in the death prison at Ava. For seventeen months Ann walked there with food, argued with officials who could have killed her for it, gave birth in a nearby hut, and hid the manuscript of his Burmese New Testament sewn into a hard pillow the guards thought worthless. He survived. She died of fever at Amherst a year later, aged thirty-six.

What was happening while he lived6 moments · 1790–1910

1792A shoemaker publishes his case, and a society is bornIn May, William Carey printed *An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens*, 87 pages arguing that the Great Commission still binds the church. That October, thirteen ministers met in a back parlour at Kettering and founded the Baptist Missionary Society with a little over £13 pledged.
1793Carey sails for IndiaThe East India Company would not carry missionaries, so Carey went out in June on a Danish ship and reached Calcutta in November. He would serve forty-one years and never once come home.
1804The British and Foreign Bible SocietyFounded in London in March to put Scripture into every language at a price ordinary people could pay. Bible societies became the quiet engine of the whole century, the missionaries translated, and the societies printed and shipped.
1807The slave trade abolished, and Morrison reaches ChinaIn March, after twenty years of losing votes, William Wilberforce and his allies carried the bill that ended the British slave trade. The same year Robert Morrison arrived at Canton, where teaching a foreigner Chinese was a capital offence; he worked in secret and gave China its first Protestant Bible and dictionary.
1812The Judsons sail, and Serampore burnsAdoniram and Ann Judson left Salem in February, the first American foreign missionaries sent out by a board. In March a fire at Serampore destroyed Carey's printing house, type, paper, and years of manuscript. He wrote that the loss was heavy but the ground was already cleared, and began again.
1825George Müller is convertedA German student with a record of lying and petty theft went along to a small Saturday prayer meeting in a private house in Halle, mostly out of curiosity. He walked out changed, and spent the next seventy years proving in public that God answers prayer.

The Missionary Century: the whole era→

Go further

Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.

Search Ann Hasseltine Judson at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites

Why this one hangs here

Hid her husband's Burmese New Testament inside a lumpy pillow the prison guards did not bother to steal.

Hangs on The Missionaries: The ones who looked at a map and could not stay home.

Standing beside himThe Missionary Century · 29 on this stretch of wall

William Carey1761–1834

A village cobbler who expected great things from God, attempted great things for God, and opened the missions era.

Adoniram Judson1788–1850

Survived Burma's death prisons and buried his family there to give the Burmese the Bible they still read.

George Müller1805–1898

Housed ten thousand orphans in Bristol and never asked anyone but God for a penny.

David Livingstone1813–1873

Walked Africa open for the gospel, shamed the slave trade in print, and died on his knees.

Horatio Spafford1828–1888

Wrote 'it is well with my soul' on the deck of a ship crossing the exact water where his four daughters had drowned.

William Booth1829–1912

Built an army out of the people no church wanted, with soup, soap, and salvation.