Before continuing, Ann took a long sip from the cup of water the cook had brought for her. “When the vicereine walked into the room, all the other wives jumped out of the way and crouched down alongside the walls. The children all disappeared, too. The vicereine then beckoned Madame Duvall and me to sit on a mat with her. She asked so many questions. Sometimes I didn’t know enough Burmese to answer them. I do hope she understood me.”
“What kind of questions did she ask?” inquired Adoniram.
“All sorts. How long do we intend to stay in Rangoon? Where did we come from? And how many wives you brought with you to Burma?!”
Adoniram chuckled at the vicereine’s last question and then asked, “Did you get to see the viceroy?”
Ann nodded. “We had been talking for about half an hour when a servant announced his arrival. I got to my feet and bowed low, and when I looked up, there he was. What a fierce-looking man! He looked as though he had come straight from the battlefield. He was holding a six-foot-long spear and looked like he would order us out at any moment. But when he saw his wife, his demeanor softened, and he had a servant offer us drinks. He did not stay long, but I’m sure he knew I was your wife. When Madame Duvall and I were ready to leave, the vicereine grabbed my hand. She told me I must come back and visit her often and that she would consider me like a sister from now on.”
Adoniram chuckled again. “You certainly make a better diplomat than I do,” he said with admiration. “God willing, we will not need to call on the vicereine for special favors, but in Rangoon anything can happen.”
In January 1814, Adoniram and Ann got to see for themselves just how cruel Burmese justice could be. The house next door was attacked by a band of about twenty robbers armed with swords and knives. The robbers stole everything they could carry and stabbed the owner to death as they left. A week later, seven of the thieves were found, and the viceroy decided to make an example of them. He ordered them to be displayed in the marketplace. Their hands and feet were tied, and their abdomens were cut open so their intestines spilled out. The robbers died a slow and painful death, and their bodies were left in the marketplace for three days for the local people to look at as a reminder of who was in control in Rangoon.
The sight of the three bodies sickened Adoniram and Ann, who worked even harder on their language studies. The need to share the gospel with the Burmese people and tell them about a new way to treat one another was more urgent than ever.
Around the middle of 1814, Felix Carey, his wife, and their three children arrived back in Rangoon. Felix had been offered a permanent post in the Royal government in Ava, and he had accepted the position. However, since this meant he would have to give up his missionary career, Adoniram and Ann would be the only “official” missionaries in Burma.
Adoniram and Ann liked Felix Carey and his family and had looked forward to getting to know them all better, so it was with mixed emotions that they said farewell to the Careys as they boarded a government boat for the journey upriver to Ava. It would have been an even sadder farewell had they known what lay ahead. Felix Carey was the only member of his family to survive the trip. The boat had sailed only a few miles upriver when a storm swept in, whipping up the surface of the river and capsizing the boat. Despite Felix’s desperate attempts to save his family, his wife and three children were all drowned. Felix Carey himself was so traumatized by the event that he did not go on to Ava. Instead, he wandered off aimlessly into the Burmese interior.
Because of the poor communications in Burma, it was two weeks before Adoniram and Ann received word of the tragedy. They were both deeply saddened by the news.
Waiting two weeks before hearing news of the tragedy was nothing, though, compared to the length of time Adoniram and Ann had to wait for mail from the United States to arrive. It was three years and seven months after they sailed from Massachusetts before they got their first letter from America. The letter contained good news. Luther Rice had stayed true to his word. He had traveled up and down the East Coast of the United States stirring up interest in the establishment of a Baptist missionary society. In May 1814, such a society had been founded under the long name of the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions. Adoniram and Ann Judson had been appointed as the new society’s first missionaries. Luther Rice was also being supported so that he could continue with the task of raising interest in and money for the new society.
Adoniram and Ann could not have been more pleased. Now they could write to William Carey and the English Baptist missionaries in Serampore and tell them they no longer needed their support.
As exciting as word of their new support was the news that another missionary couple, George and Phebe Hough, were on their way to join the Judsons in Burma. George was a printer by trade and was bringing a small printing press with him. This was more than Adoniram and Ann could have hoped for. They would no longer be the only missionaries in Burma.
All this good news, coupled with the fact that Ann was due to have a baby any day, lifted their spirits. On September 11, 1814, Adoniram delivered a healthy baby boy. He and Ann named their son Roger Williams Judson, after Roger Williams, an early missionary to the Indians in New England. Both Ann and Adoniram hoped that their son, like his namesake, would grow up to be a missionary.
Roger Williams Judson was the first white baby to be born in Rangoon, and whenever Ann took him out of the house, a crowd gathered. “Look how white his feet are!” they would exclaim, or, “His eyes are the color of the sky!”
By now the Judsons’ hard work was beginning to pay off. Ann was able to speak fluent Burmese, while Adoniram, who had spent hundreds of hours with his tutor, had a deep understanding of how the language was put together and had nearly finished writing the Burmese grammar book Felix Carey had begun. It looked as though the hard times were behind them. The viceroy accepted their presence, more missionaries were on their way, Adoniram and Ann were healthy, the baby was thriving, and the missionaries were beginning to have meaningful conversations with the local people about the gospel. It seemed nothing could go wrong now.
Chapter 11
Losses and Gains
Roger Judson turned six months old in March 1816. It was about this time that his parents noticed something strange. During the day Roger was fine. He would lie on his mat in Adoniram’s study following his father’s every move, or he would crawl around the garden. He enjoyed all the attention he got on outings with his parents around Rangoon. At night, however, he was a different child. His face felt feverish, and he cried and fussed for hours. Adoniram and Ann worried over what the problem could be. Neither of them knew enough about babies to decide whether it was normal teething behavior or if their son had something more serious wrong with him. Only time would tell, and it did.
Exactly two weeks after Adoniram and Ann first noticed Roger’s high temperature at night, the baby had a coughing fit. Nothing his frantic parents did for him seemed to help. Within an hour, Roger was dead.
The grief over Roger’s death sent Adoniram and Ann into deep depression. Ann wanted to know if all their children were going to be taken from them. Adoniram had no answer for her as he dug a small grave for his son under the mango tree in the mission house garden. News spread quickly of Roger’s death, and later that day, over two hundred friends and acquaintances arrived in time for the funeral of the “little white child.”
For the next three days, neither Adoniram nor Ann had the heart to go out in public. Instead, they locked themselves away in the mission house, surrounded by the few physical reminders of their dead son; a crib, the tiny clothes he wore, and his mat on the floor.
On the fourth day, Ann looked out the window and let out a surprised gasp. “Adoniram,” she called, “the vicereine is on her elephant, and she is stopped outside the gate.”
Adoniram hurried to the window. His mouth fell open as he counted the number of officers and attendants the vicereine had with her. There were over two hundred of them. “What can this mean?” he asked anxiously, slipping on his jacket.
“I’m not sure,” replied Ann. “I have not been to visit her lately. I hope she’s not offended.”
The Judsons stood transfixed as the vicereine, dressed in a blue and gold silk robe, was lifted down from the elephant and set on the ground.
“Come on,” said Adoniram, grabbing Ann’s hand. “We had better welcome her.”
When they opened the gate, the vicereine stepped into the courtyard.
“My dear sister,” she began, holding out her hands to Ann. “I have only just heard of your son’s death. Why did you not send for me so I could come to the funeral?”
Adoniram watched his wife turn white and supposed she, too, was thinking of the penalty a person could pay for offending a member of the viceroy’s family.
Ann quickly regained her composure. “I am sorry,” she replied. “I was so shocked by Roger’s death that I did not think of it.”
“Ah, well, I am here now,” replied the vicereine, patting Ann on the hand. “It is not good to shut yourself away like this. Tomorrow I will send an elephant for you both, and you shall be my guests for an outing.”
Neither Adoniram nor Ann felt like going on an outing, but deep down they both knew they had to find a way to put their baby son’s death behind them and go on.
Sure enough, the following morning a huge elephant arrived outside the mission house, complete with a howdah, a little booth perched on the animal’s back in which Adoniram and Ann were to sit. A rope ladder was dropped, and the two of them were helped up onto the elephant’s back. The driver, who sat just behind the elephant’s ears, skillfully guided the animal down the road to the corner, where the vicereine was waiting on her own elephant. Looking very regal in her gold-covered howdah, the vicereine smiled and waved to Adoniram and Ann.
Soon the procession of elephants and people had walked through town and out into the jungle around Rangoon. Despite their recent loss, Adoniram and Ann were fascinated by the whole adventure. Their elephant walked side-by-side with the vicereine’s. In front of them were thirty men with guns and spears, each man clad in a red tunic and wearing a long, floppy hat that reached to his shoulders. Behind them were four more elephants carrying the viceroy’s son and important government officials. And behind them was a throng of nearly three hundred servants carrying everything from huge fans to a supply of the vicereine’s favorite cigars.
From his position on the elephant’s back, Adoniram was able to get a sense of the animal’s strength. As they ventured deeper into the jungle, the path became narrower. At one point, the driver tapped the elephant with a stick, and the huge animal stopped and wound its trunk around the tree in front of it. The howdah swayed as the great beast braced its back legs and pulled the tree out of the ground by its roots. The elephant tossed the tree to one side and lumbered on down the path.
Finally, the procession reached an open spot under a huge banyan tree, where the vicereine signaled the procession to stop. “This will be a fine place for our meal,” she said, smiling at Ann.
Ann nodded and waited to be helped down the fifteen feet from the elephant’s back to the ground, where they all ate an enjoyable lunch. The vicereine did everything she could to take Adoniram’s and Ann’s minds off their dead son.
The vicereine’s efforts seemed to pay off, and soon both of the Judsons began to focus again on their missionary work. Ann, who was very lonely without Roger, decided to throw herself into starting a school to teach girls how to read. Most of the boys in Burma learned to read, but not the girls, and Ann wanted to do something about it. Soon there were twenty, then thirty girls lined up at the mission house each morning waiting for Ann to begin reading lessons. After class, when the mothers came to collect their daughters, Ann would tell Bible stories. Many of the women would stay for twenty minutes or longer to listen to the strange tales the white woman told them fluently in their own language.
