Adoniram Judson (/ˌædəˈnaɪrəm/; August 9, 1788 – April 12, 1850) was an American Congregationalist and later Particular Baptist[1] missionary who worked in Burma for almost 40 years.

His mission and work with Luther Rice led to the formation of the first Baptist association in America to support missionaries.

Judson entered the College of Rhode Island & Providence Plantations (now Brown University) at 16, and graduated as valedictorian of his class at 19.

[2] While studying at college, he met a young man named Jacob Eames, a devout deist and skeptic.

After graduating from college, Judson opened a school and wrote an English grammar and mathematics textbook for girls.

Both had been sleeping in separate rooms at an inn, and Judson heard the death throes of the person next door, only to learn from the clerk the next morning that his anonymous neighbor had been Mr. Eames, who had indeed died.

[5] Eager to serve abroad, Judson became convinced that "Asia with its idolatrous myriads, was the most important field in the world for missionary effort".

On September 19, Judson was appointed by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions as a missionary to the East.

[2] Both the local and British authorities did not want Americans evangelizing Hindus in the area, so the group of missionaries separated and sought other mission fields.

The following year, on July 13, 1813, he moved to Burma, and en route his wife miscarried their first child aboard ship.

Luther Rice, who had also converted, was in poor health and returned to America where his work and William Carey's urging resulted in the 1814 formation of the first national Baptist denomination in the United States for Foreign Missions (commonly called the Triennial Convention) and its offshoot the American Baptist Missionary Union.

Judson, who already knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, immediately began studying Burmese grammar but took over three years to learn to speak it.

At first, he tried adapting to Burmese customs by wearing a yellow robe to mark himself as a teacher of religion, but he soon changed to white to show he was not a Buddhist.

Buddhist traditions and the Burmese worldview at that time led many to disregard the pleadings of Adoniram and his wife to believe in one living and all-powerful God.

"[9] One of the early disciples was U Shwe Ngong, a teacher and leader of a group of intellectuals dissatisfied with Buddhism, who were attracted to the new faith.

Judson, instead of welcoming him to the faith, pressed him further asking if he believed what he had read in the gospel of Matthew that Jesus the son of God died on the cross.

By 1823, ten years after his arrival, membership of the little church had grown to 18, and Judson finished the first draft of his translation of the New Testament in Burmese.

Burma threatened Assam and Bengal; Britain responded by attacking and absorbing two Burmese provinces into her India holdings to broaden her trade routes to East Asia.

The first Burmese pastor Judson ordained was Ko-Thah-a, one of the original group of converts, who refounded the church at Rangoon.

The Karen people were a hunted minority group of ancient Tibeto-Burman ancestry scattered in the forests and jungles of the Salween River and in the hills along the southeast coast.

The freed slave, Ko Tha Byu, was an illiterate, surly man who spoke almost no Burmese and was reputed to be not only a thief, but also a murderer who admitted killing at least 30 men, but could not remember exactly how many more.

Ko Tha Byu was no sooner baptized, when he set off into the jungle alone to preach to his fellow tribe members.

While the Boardmans and Ko Tha Byu were penetrating the jungles to the south, Judson shook off a paralyzing year-long siege of depression that overcame him after the death of his wife and set out alone on long canoe trips up the Salween River into the tiger-infested jungles to evangelize the northern Karen.

He continued home, where he was greeted as a celebrity and toured the eastern seaboard raising the profile of and money for missionary activity.

[12] On June 2, 1846, Judson married for the third time, to writer Emily Chubbuck,[3] who he had commissioned to write memoirs for Sarah Hall Boardman.

Cummings proved her mettle at once, choosing to work alone with Karen evangelists in the malaria-ridden Salween River valley north of Moulmein, but within two years she died of fever.

On April 12, 1850, he died at age 61 on board ship in the Bay of Bengal and was buried at sea, having spent 37 years abroad with only one trip back home to America.

[citation needed] Each July, Baptist churches in Myanmar celebrate "Judson Day," commemorating his arrival as a missionary.

[16] Christian Union owns and operates a ministry center named after him at his undergraduate alma mater, Brown University.

In World War II, the United States liberty ship SS Adoniram Judson was named in his honor.