Some of Missionary Adoniram Judson’s Wife’s Perils in Burma

. . . Added interest in the missionary operations of the Convention had been awakened by the return of Mrs. Judson to this country, in 1822, on account of her health. She arrived September 25, and remained until June 22, 1823. Dr. Wayland said of her that he had never met a more remarkable woman, and the impression she made upon the Christians she met was most profound. On her return to Burma she was accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Wade. Then followed the terrible experiences at Ava and Oung-pen-la, where for twenty-one long, weary months, Mr. Judson suffered untold horrors in a loathsome confinement, followed from prison to prison by his heroic wife, busy in the endeavor to minister to his wants and seeking in all possible ways to secure his release. The release came at length by the advance of the British troops, but Mrs. Judson did not long survive the terrible strain to which she had been subjected, and she was buried at Amherst. Mrs. Judson's story of those days at Ava and Oung-pen-la, never to be forgotten, had thrilled the hearts of the friends of missions everywhere, and nowhere more than in her own loved New England. There was not a Baptist home in which her vivid recital was not read, and many a heart was stirred with a desire to engage in a service where even such sufferings were possible; and now [how] the tidings of her death profoundly affected hearts that had already been moved by her own womanly words.

      Meanwhile, George Dana Boardman, who was born in Livermore, Maine, February 8, 1801, and was graduated at Waterville College, in 1822, had heard the cry that went up when Colman died in Arracan, "Who will go to take his place?" and he had answered, "I will go." He reached Amherst with Mrs. Boardman, after Mrs. Judson's death, and helped place by her mother's side, under the hopia tree, the little Maria who had just breathed her last. At Moulmein he was joined by Judson and Wade; and afterward at Tavoy, among whose hills he witnessed the baptism of a goodly number of converts, he finished his labors and went to his reward. And so the call went back to the New England hills, "Who will take Boardman's place?"

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[From A History of Baptists in New England, By Henry Burrage, 1894, pp. 155-57.