Emily Chubbuck

Life

Emily Chubbuck was born in August 1817 in Eaton, Madison County, New York, the daughter of Charles Chubbuck and Lavinia Richards Chubbuck. Sources differ on her birthday, giving either August 22 or August 23. Her family was poor, and she is said to have worked in a woolen mill during the summers before she turned twelve, attending the village school only in the winters. Largely self-taught, she taught children in local schools from 1832 to 1840. Around 1834 she became a member of a Baptist church. In 1840 she entered the Utica Female Seminary, where she studied for one year, and she afterward taught English composition there until 1846.

Adoniram Judson, a missionary to Burma (present-day Myanmar), lost his second wife, Sarah Hall Boardman, in 1845 while sailing to the United States. During his stay in America, he read Emily's writings and asked her to write a biography of Sarah. The project drew the two together, and they married on June 2, 1846. Emily was 29 at the time, and Judson was 57. Emily set out for Burma with her husband and his three children by Sarah, arriving in November 1846. In 1847 she gave birth to a daughter, also named Emily. In April 1850 her husband died at sea in the Bay of Bengal, and a son born shortly afterward reportedly died on the day of his birth. She returned to the United States in 1851 and lived in Hamilton, New York, where she died of tuberculosis on June 1, 1854, at the age of 36.

Ministry and Accomplishments

• Literary career: She published under three names. At first she published chiefly children's books under her own name; her first book was Charles Linn (1841). She is said to have used the proceeds from her books to buy a home for her family. Beginning in 1844 she corresponded with and became close to the writer Nathaniel Parker Willis. Around this time she began contributing to popular magazines under the name "Fanny Forester," which brought her wide recognition. During and after her missionary years, she wrote as "Emily Judson."
• Missionary work: In Burma she reportedly assisted her husband in compiling his Burmese dictionary. Her Memoir of Sarah B. Judson, completed there, was published in New York in 1848. It was so widely read that the 1849 edition bore the imprint "eighteenth thousand," and it went through numerous later printings.
• Later writings: In 1852 she published a collection of poems, An Olio of Domestic Verses. After her husband's death, when criticism of his missionary work arose, she wrote in his defense.

Influence on the Korean Church

No direct connection with the Korean church has been established. In Korea she appears to be mentioned mainly in accounts of Adoniram Judson's life, as one of the three wives who worked alongside him in Burma.

Assessment

Her literary talent was highly regarded during her lifetime. In 1846 Willis called her "a woman of genius" in the Home Journal, the magazine he edited. Godey's Lady's Book, a prominent women's magazine of the day, likewise praised her lively and emotive style. Accounts of her life frequently emphasize that she gave up the fame she enjoyed as a popular author to go to the mission field. At the same time, she is generally regarded as never having become as widely known to later generations as Judson's first wife, Ann Hasseltine, or his second wife, Sarah.