Ann Hasseltine attended the Bradford Academy and during a revival there read Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education by Hannah More, which led her to "seek a life of 'usefulness'".

Her father, John Hasseltine, was a deacon at the church that hosted the gathering that, in 1810, founded the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and, according to Ann's sister, the family first met her husband Adoniram Judson at that time.

She wrote tragic descriptions of child marriages, female infanticide, and the trials of the Burmese women who had no rights except for the ones their husbands gave them.

[1] Her letters home were published in periodicals such as The American Baptist Magazine and republished after her death as devotional writings, making both her and Adoniram celebrities in America.

[1] There have been at least sixteen biographies of Judson published, the most famous having a new edition printed almost every year from 1830 to 1856, and was described by Unitarian Lydia Maria Child as "a book so universally known that it scarcely need be mentioned.