1837-1916  

Adoniram Brown Judson

Physician     Burma/New York

Missionary and historian, Rosalie Hall Hunt, reports vividly on this son of Adoniram Judson, Jr. and Sarah Hall Boardman Judson, in Bless God and Take Courage.

In 1915, an elderly Dr. [Adoniram Brown] Judson wrote recollections of his Moulmein childhood. His reminiscences are full of the derring-do of children living on the edge of a jungle, short on toys but long on imagination…. He particularly relished occupying a howdah (seat) on the back of a massive elephant going for a sky-high ride…

Then it was 1845, and eight-year-old Adoniram Brown Judson was headed to American for the first time. He never saw Burma again…. The memories of that voyage grieved him ever after as he recalled waking up one morning near the shores of St. Helena to find his mother [Sarah Hall Boardman Judson] dead….

Adoniram and his younger brother Elnathan lived with Dr. and Mrs. Newton in Worcester, Massachusetts, where half-brother George [Dana Boardman, Jr.] also lived. Later the younger two boys lived with Dr. and Mrs. Bright….

Adoniram graduated from Brown in 1859 and studied medicine at Harvard. During the Civil War, he was an assistant surgeon in the U. S. Navy. Later becoming a specialist in orthopedic surgery, he was head of the New York Hospital’s outpatient department for thirty years. A prolific writer, Adoniram published more than fifty papers. He also helped organize the American Orthopedic Association and became its president in 1891.

In 1916, the year he died, Adoniram reflected on what might be the biggest tragedy of missionaries’ lives—separation from their children. It was wrenching for both parent and child….. “A divided and scattered family presents the saddest and most perplexing problem of missionary life.”[1]

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[1] Rosalie Hall Hunt, Bless God and Take Courage (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2005), pp. 284-286.

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