Judson, Adoniram, 1788-1850; Missionaries -- Burma -- Biography; Missionaries -- United States -- Biography
The family lived in Malden until Adoniram was about four and a half
years old. During that time his sister, Abigail Brown Judson, was born,
to become the companion of his childhood and his life-long confidante.
She still survives him; and in the old homestead at Plymouth, at the age
of more than ninety years, awaits a reunion with that brother of whose
“affectionate tenderness” she has still a “vivid recollection.” She
remembers hearing her parents relate how even in those early childhood
days in Malden, when her brother was only four years old, he used to
gather together the children of the neighborhood to play church, he
officiating as minister; and that even then his favorite hymn was the
one beginning, “Go preach my Gospel, saith the Lord.”
In January, 1793, the family removed to Wenham, Massachusetts, a village
about twenty miles north-east of Boston. Here Adoniram lived until he
was twelve years old. Here his brother Elnathan, who became a surgeon in
the United States Navy, was born May 28, 1794. Here, too, when Adoniram
was eight years old, his sister Mary was born, and died six months
later. The loss of this little sister must have marked an epoch in his
boyhood, for memorable is the hour when the keen ploughshare of sorrow
tears up the fresh turf of a child’s heart.
Wenham, too, was the scene of many of the following reminiscences, for
which we are indebted to the pen of Mrs. E. C. Judson:
“Adoniram was about seven years old, when, having been duly instructed
that the earth is a spherical body, and that it revolves around the
sun, it became a serious question in his mind whether or not the sun
moved at all. He might have settled the point by asking his father or
mother; but that would have spoiled all his pleasant speculations, and
probably would have been the very last thing to occur to him. His
little sister, whom alone he consulted, said the sun did move, for she
could see it; but he had learned already, in this matter, to distrust
the evidence of his senses, and he talked so wisely about positive
proof, that she was astonished and silenced. Soon after this, he was
one day missed about midday; and as he had not been seen for several
hours, his father became uneasy and went in search of him. He was
found in a field, at some distance from the house, stretched on his
back, his hat with a circular hole cut in the crown, laid over his
face, and his swollen eyes almost blinded with the intense light and
heat. He only told his father that he was looking at the sun; but he
assured his sister that he had solved the problem with regard to the
sun’s moving, though she never could comprehend the process by which
he arrived at the result.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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