Memoir of Sarah B. Judson of the American Mission to Burmah
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
The Kathayan Slave, and Other Papers Connected with Missionary Life
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format. Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship.
Emily Chubbuck Judson was an American writer and missionary. She had three names she used to sign her published works, which correspond somewhat with the type of writing she did: "Emily Chubbuck" - in her early career mostly writing children's books, "Fanny Forester" - in her period contributing to popular magazines, and "Emily Judson" during her missionary period and her later years.
Background
Emily was born on August 22, 1817 at Eaton, near Hamilton, New York, United States, where her parents, coming from New Hampshire, had settled in 1816. She was the daughter of Charles and Lavinia (Richards) Chubbuck.
She was descended from John Chubbuck, who emigrated to America from Wales about 1700. Charles Chubbuck and his wife, always poor, were people of character and intelligence. Emily, their fifth child, was frail from birth, and the circumstances of her early years did not aid her chance of health. The family lived in many poor homes near and in Hamilton, and the mother and daughters performed all sorts of drudgery, including the collecting of firewood from snowy fields, while the father attempted to earn a living in various ways.
Education
In 1840 the Misses Sheldon, of Utica Female Seminary, assisted her to enter their school for advanced study. Here she overworked, attaining high scholarship and writing sketches and verses for a Hamilton paper in order to help her parents.
Career
Emily combined different occupations with attendance at district schools, at one time working in a woolen factory, at another assisting her mother in taking boarders.
From 1832 to 1840 she taught at Nelson Corners, Morrisville, Smithfield, Brookfield, Syracuse, Hamilton, and Prattsville, carrying on her own studies all this time.
In 1841 she became teacher of English at the Utica Seminary and published a Sunday-school book, Charles Linn, or How to Observe the Golden Rule. Other books of the same type followed: The Great Secret, or How to be Happy (1842), Allen Lucas, or the Self-Made Man (1842), John Frink (1843). With $400 from her meager earnings she bought a house for her parents in Hamilton.
In 1844 she wrote a humorous letter to N. P. Willis, editor of the New York Mirror, asking for literary work, and thus became a regular contributor, under the name of Fanny Forester. She used personal experiences in her sketches, which are conversational and quietly humorous. Many of them were published in two volumes: Trippings in Author-Land (1846) and Alderbrook: a Collection of Fanny Forester's Village Sketches, Poems &c (1847).
The winter of 1845-46 she spent in Philadelphia and there met the hero of her girlhood, Rev. Adoniram Judson, home temporarily from Burma. Though he disapproved of her writing on frivolous subjects, he proposed marriage to her soon after their first meeting. They sailed for Burma July 11, and reached Maulmain in November. In February 1847 they went to Rangoon, where living conditions were so wretched and the natives so hostile that they remained only seven months, returning to Maulmain. The Memoir of Sarah B. Judson, Member of the American Mission to Burmah was published in 1848. The record of Mrs. Judson's next two years is one of continuous illness, and in April 1850, her husband died.
Her own health entirely broken, she left India with her child and two step-children on January 22, 1851. Arriving in Boston, she made arrangements for the three elder Judson children already in America and began preparations for a memoir of her husband. In May 1852 she purchased a house in Hamilton, New York, which was her home during the two years of life remaining to her. Hemorrhages from her lungs warned her that her condition was serious, and she hastened to finish some writing and to make financial arrangements for her parents, her own child, and Judson's children. Early in 1854 she attempted an abridged memoir of her husband but was unable to finish it. She died at Hamilton in June.
Achievements
Emily Chubbuck Judson was a prolific writer, whose famous works were The Great Secret, Memoir of Mrs. Sarah B. Judson, My Two Sisters. She also was a well-known editor of the New York Mirror, a contributor to other journals including The Columbian and Graham's Magazine.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Religion
The family were Baptists and Emily, having read of the work of Rev. Adoniram Judson in Burma, decided to be a missionary; but under the influence of a teacher who was a student of Voltaire and Tom Paine, her faith in the Bible was shaken. Though she had always been abnormally religious, she underwent conversion in 1834.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Her friend Nathaniel Parker Willis called her a "woman of genius" in an article printed in the July 25, 1846, issue of the Home Journal.
Connections
On June 2, 1846, Adoniram Judson and Emily Chubbuck were married. Their daughter was born in Maulmain. Her second child, a boy, was born ten days after his father's death and died almost immediately.
