PLYMOUTH, Mass. – At Burial Hill in Plymouth, Mass., modern sightseers can find the graves of Mayflower heroes like William Bradford, who was the governor of Plymouth Colony from 1621 to 1657. But on Burial Hill they can also see a memorial to the family of Adoniram Judson, Jr. (1788-1850), the famed Baptist missionary and Bible translator who left the shores of Massachusetts to proclaim the gospel in Burma. Judson’s father, Adoniram, Sr., served as pastor of a church in Plymouth. Nearly 200 years after the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock, Adoniram, Jr., and his new bride, Ann “Nancy” Hasseltine (1789-1826), set sail for Asia, never to return. The Baptist missionary would become the first person to translate the Bible into the Burmese language. This Bible translation, in fact, was printed by a Burmese man by the name of Ah Vong, who is the great-great-great grandfather of Harriet Bain, a member of First Baptist Church, Rolla (Read story here).
Adoniram Judson