Reluctantly Adoniram broke the seal and opened the envelope to read the details. He noted that the letter was dated a month before, October 26, 1826. He read on: “My Dear Sir: To one who has suffered so much and with such exemplary fortitude, there needs but little preface to tell a tale of distress. It were cruel indeed to torture you with doubt and suspense. To sum up the unhappy tidings in a few words—Mrs. Judson is no more.”
Adoniram sat still, his eyes fixed on the words before him, trying desperately to grasp the meaning of what he had just read. Mrs. Judson is no more. Ann? The bride who had followed him to Burma? The woman who had risked everything to stay near him while he was in prison? His best friend in all the world? Ann was dead? It didn’t seem possible.
After several motionless minutes, Adoniram read on. Ann had apparently developed a severe fever that the doctor could not cure. Despite the best medical care available, she had slipped into unconsciousness and died. Her body had been buried under a hopia tree. The letter went on to say that Maria was in the care of Jonathan and Deborah Wade, the missionary couple who had accompanied Ann back to Burma after her trip to New England three years before.
Adoniram folded the letter and laid his head on the desk. Tears flowed down his face and onto his jacket sleeve. He began to sob, quietly at first and then so loudly that Dr. Price came to see what the trouble was. There was nothing he could do to comfort Adoniram. Nothing could wipe away the words, Mrs. Judson is no more.
Only three days later, Dr. Price himself needed comfort when his Burmese wife, along with their baby, died during childbirth. Now the two men were widowers grieving together.
It was two months later, at the end of January 1827, before Adoniram’s work for the East India Company was finished and he was free to return to Amherst. Adoniram felt bitter about his dealings with the East India Company. The final treaty had no clause guaranteeing religious freedom for all the people of Burma. Adoniram felt used and that his time had been wasted. This was not just any time that had been wasted; it had been his last opportunity to be with the only woman he had ever loved. The trip back downriver to Amherst was sad and lonely.
When Adoniram arrived and little Maria was brought out onto the veranda to be reunited with her father, she clung fearfully to Deborah Wade. It was obvious she did not recognize her own father. Adoniram wept, for he knew it would be only a matter of time before Maria forgot her mother as well.
Adoniram sought out Dr. Richardson, who had treated Ann until she died. In his opinion, the years of not eating enough or taking care of her health had weakened Ann to the point where a fever could kill her. This made Adoniram feel worse, not better. He was the one who had been in the death prison, yet ironically he had lived through the ordeal while the stress of the situation on Ann had helped to end her life.
Still, there was work to be done. The Baptist mission society in the United States was sending out more missionaries. Soon George Boardman and his beautiful blonde, blue-eyed wife, Sarah, arrived in Burma, along with their baby daughter.
More than ever, Adoniram felt the need to keep on with his translation work. As well, he preached several times a week in a hastily built zayat. Freed from the laws governing religion in the rest of Burma, many citizens of Amherst were eager to learn about the gospel. But despite all his busyness, Ann was never far from his thoughts.
Six months to the day after Ann’s death, Maria died. She was two years, three months old. Adoniram buried her beside her mother. In July 1827, Adoniram received a letter from his mother informing him that his father had died. Although his father had been an old man, this was still a difficult death for Adoniram to cope with. Not long afterwards, he received word that his brother Elnathan, who was thirty-five years old, had died. Soon after that, Elnathan’s widow and his only daughter also died. Such news greatly depressed Adoniram, who began to think that his mother would never have any grandchildren who lived past the age of ten. He also began to wonder about the point of living. Slowly he began to cut himself off from any social contact. He informed the governor and other British dignitaries that he no longer wanted to be invited to their parties.
By the second anniversary of Ann’s death, Adoniram was spending his days sitting quietly in a jungle hut. The other missionaries tried to interest him in the daily running of the mission, but it was an uphill battle. All Adoniram wanted was to be left alone with his God and with the memories of his dead wife and children.
It was the beginning of 1830 before the cloud of depression began to lift from Adoniram. Cephas Bennett and his family arrived in Burma from the United States. Cephas was a printer, and once again Adoniram found his thoughts turning towards things the mission could print: tracts, the New Testament, and Psalms, which he had also translated. At the same time, he decided it was time to start focusing his attention back on translating the rest of the Old Testament.
About this time, word reached Adoniram that Dr. Price had died, leaving Sarah and George Boardman to care for his two children. By now the Boardmans were living in the highlands of Burma. They had two boys of their own, Judson and George, who had both been born in Burma. Their oldest child, Sarah, had died. It seemed to Adoniram that death was still all around him, but somehow he now had strength to go on with his missionary work. He decided to leave Amherst and its painful memories behind and move to Moulmein, about forty miles north of Amherst, where a small band of Burmese Christians needed a leader.
All around him, Adoniram saw encouraging signs that Burma was changing. In March, he traveled to Rangoon for the festival at Shwe Dagon pagoda. Cephas Bennett had printed ten thousand tracts for the occasion, and Adoniram distributed them all to people who asked. Six thousand people came to the mission house to ask questions about what they had read. Adoniram was delighted. He wrote of this in his journal:
Some [inquirers] come two or three months’ journey, from the borders of Siam and China—“Sir, we hear that there is an eternal hell. We are afraid of it. Do give us a writing that will tell us how to escape it.” Others come from the frontiers of Kathay, a hundred miles north of Ava—“Sir, we have seen a writing that tells about an eternal God. Are you the man that gives away such writings? If so, pray give us one, for we want to know the truth before we die.” Others come from the interior of the country, where the name of Jesus Christ is little known—“Are you Jesus Christ’s man? Give us a writing that tells about Jesus Christ.”
Adoniram marveled at the change the war had made in the openness of the Burmese people to Christianity. It had taken him nine years of hard work to win the first eighteen Burmese converts. Now, in 1831 alone, there had been two hundred seventeen baptisms. This brought the total number of baptized Christians in Burma to two hundred forty Burmese and one hundred thirteen foreigners. Adoniram was only sorry that Ann was not at his side to see it all for herself.
Chapter 18
Sarah
More than anything, Adoniram liked to be out among the Burmese people handing out tracts, answering questions, and challenging Buddhist holy men. Yet he realized his most urgent work was that of Bible translation. While translation of the New Testament into Burmese was complete, he was only one third of the way through translating the Old Testament. So as much as he wanted to be out among the people, he set his sights on completing translation of the entire Bible. For the next two and a half years, Adoniram did his translation work six days a week. His goal was to translate thirty verses a day. This was a difficult task, because Adoniram did not take the easy route of translating from the English Bible into Burmese. Rather, he translated the original Hebrew directly into Burmese. This made for a more accurate translation, but it took a lot more time and effort.
On January 31, 1834, the huge job was complete. In his hands Adoniram held a complete translation of the Bible in the Burmese language. Now he had to wait while it was typeset in Burmese type and printed. This was a painstaking task that could take anywhere from three to six years.
On completion of the translation, Adoniram received a letter of congratulation from Sarah Boardman. Soon after their arrival at Amherst, Sarah and her husband, George, had moved to the jungles of Burma. There they had worked among the Karen people, a native tribe who lived in large family groupings. Of all the people in Burma, the Karen were the most open to the gospel, and a number of them had been converted. Three years before, in 1831, George Boardman had died. The day before his death he baptized thirty-four Karen converts. Sarah Boardman decided to stay on alone in the jungle to carry on the missionary work her husband had begun among the Karen.
Now that Adoniram had more time on his hands, he began corresponding with Sarah Boardman. Their letters quickly became more personal, until in March Adoniram wrote asking Sarah to marry him. She agreed, and the two of them were married on April 1, 1834. Adoniram was forty-five years old, and Sarah was thirty. Neither of them knew whether they would spend a few months or many years together, but they were both glad to have found someone to share their lives with.
In December that year, Sarah sent her only surviving child, George, back to the United States. Her other son, Judson, had died several years before in the jungle, as had Dr. Price’s two children, whom the Boardmans had been raising. Sarah had been planning to send George home for some time because she thought the healthier climate there was the best chance her son had at reaching adulthood. Both she and Adoniram were sad to see seven-year-old George leave. They didn’t know when they would see him again. As it turned out, one of them would see him again, and one would not.
Adoniram and Sarah moved into a three-room house in Moulmein. Like Ann, Sarah had a flare for languages. She set about learning Taling, a tribal language spoken in Burma, in the hopes that one day gospel literature could be translated into this language, too. Adoniram was also busy. The local church now had one hundred members, and during the week, classes were held in everything from prayer to learning English.
On October 31, 1835, another Judson baby was born. Adoniram named her Abigail Ann, after his mother and his first wife. Three more children followed in quick succession: Adoniram Jr. on April 7, 1837, Elnathan on July 15, 1838, and Henry on December 31, 1839.
In October 1840, Adoniram finally had in his hands a bound copy of the Burmese Bible, all twelve hundred pages of it. It was now twenty-seven years since he and Ann had stepped off the Georgiana in Rangoon and first heard the Burmese language spoken. Adoniram had struggled to learn the language at first, but the struggle had been worth it. Now the Burmese could read about God and Jesus and salvation in their own language. It was Adoniram’s greatest achievement with the Burmese language.
In 1840, Sarah was expecting another baby, though this time it ended in sadness. They named the stillborn child Luther. Soon afterwards, Sarah became ill with dysentery, as did all of the children. Since nothing could be done for the disease in Burma, the doctor recommended they take a trip to Serampore, where a slight change in climate might help.
The journey to Calcutta was perilous, and included the ship’s being caught on a sandbar. Eventually, though, the family made it to Serampore alive, and once there, Sarah’s health began to improve. The children’s health began to improve, too, all except one-year-old Henry. The boy continued to get sicker and weaker, until on July 31, 1841, he died quietly in his sleep. Adoniram and Sarah buried their young son in the mission cemetery at Serampore alongside the graves of William Carey, William Ward, and Joshua Marshman, the three men who had so greatly helped and influenced Adoniram and Ann when they had arrived in Calcutta twenty-nine years before on their way to be missionaries in Burma. With great sadness the Judson family returned to Burma.
