Ann Hasseltine Judson

Life

She was born in 1789 in Bradford, Massachusetts. Her father, John Hasseltine, was a deacon in the Congregational church. While she was a student at Bradford Academy, a religious revival broke out at the school, and it was reportedly around this time that she resolved to live a "useful life." After completing her schooling, she worked as a teacher until her marriage.

After marrying Adoniram Judson, she traveled with him to Asia, and they began missionary work in Rangoon (present-day Yangon), Burma. Reportedly, they did not win a single convert during their first several years in Burma. At one point she returned to the United States for medical treatment and remained there for nearly two years. Around 1823 the couple moved to Ava, the capital of Burma.

When the First Anglo-Burmese War broke out in 1824, the Burmese government suspected Westerners of being British spies. On June 8 of that year, her husband was arrested and imprisoned. In January 1825, Ann Judson gave birth to a daughter, Maria, outside the prison. Her husband was released in November 1825 because he was needed as an interpreter in negotiations with the British. Later, while he was away on negotiation duties, she died of fever in Amherst on October 24, 1826, at the age of thirty-six. Her daughter Maria died a short time later.

Ministry and Accomplishments

• Partnership in mission: Together with her husband, she laid the foundations of the Burma mission. In Ava she also gathered local girls and taught them.
• Sustaining the prisoners and seeking their release: The prison did not provide food while her husband was held there. Ann Judson brought food every day and bribed the jailers in order to care for her husband and the other Western prisoners. She repeatedly called on royal court officials to petition for his release. When the prisoners were transferred to another prison, she followed them with her infant daughter and continued to care for them.
• Protecting the translation manuscript: According to tradition, she hid the manuscript of her husband's Burmese translation of the New Testament inside a pillow and smuggled it into the prison.
• Pioneer among women foreign missionaries: She is counted among the first American women to serve as foreign missionaries and is sometimes described as the first American woman missionary to go to the East.

Influence on the Korean Church

No record has been found of any direct connection between Ann Judson and the Korean church. In Korea she is introduced mainly in connection with the story of her husband Adoniram Judson's mission in Burma.

Assessment

She is highly regarded for her devotion in remaining with her husband and the mission field amid suffering, and as a figure who opened the way for women missionaries. However, her story has been transmitted mainly through devotional biographies and missionary narratives. As a result, details such as the length of the imprisonment (seventeen months or about two years), the specifics of the pillow manuscript story, and the cause of her death vary somewhat from source to source.