Judson, Adoniram, << `ad` oh NY ruhm >> (1788-1850), a Baptist clergyman, was largely responsible for the founding of the first American Congregationalist and Baptist foreign missionary societies. He was the pioneer American missionary to Burma (now Myanmar).
Judson was born on Aug. 9, 1788, in Malden, Massachusetts, the son of a Congregational minister. He graduated from Brown University and Andover Seminary. Judson’s interest in missionary work in the Far East resulted in the organization of a Congregationalist missionary society. The society sent him to India after his ordination in 1812. But Judson soon left the Congregationalist church, deciding he disagreed with its practice of infant baptism. He offered to serve the American Baptists, who then organized a foreign missionary society. In 1813, Judson began working in Burma. He had written a Burmese grammar and baptized his first convert by 1819. He completed the Burmese Bible in 1834 and finished an English-Burmese dictionary in 1849. He died on April 12, 1850.
