Sarah Hall was born in 1803 in Alstead, in rural New Hampshire, the daughter of a simple family that could not afford to pay for her education. Self-taught, she learned to read and write at home while helping raise her younger siblings.
While still young, she was moved by the death of missionary James Colman in Burma and wrote a poem in his memory. The verses caught the attention of seminary student George Dana Boardman, who was likewise preparing to serve in that country; they married in July 1825.
Two weeks after the wedding, they sailed for India. Held up for more than a year in Calcutta because of the Anglo-Burmese War, they did not reach Maulmain, in Burma, until 1827. In 1828 they moved to Tavoy, among the Karen people.
Sarah opened and ran schools for Karen boys and girls, staffed with native teachers, and began accompanying her husband on preaching journeys through the jungle. Of the three children she had with Boardman, two died in infancy. In 1831, George died of tuberculosis, leaving her a widow at 27, far from her homeland.
Going against the custom of the day, by which a missionary widow was expected to return home, Sarah remained alone in Tavoy for three years, rebuilding the schools and sustaining the small Karen church.
In 1834 she married Adoniram Judson and moved to Moulmein. Around that time, her eldest son, George Dana Boardman Jr., still a child, was sent to the United States to study; mother and son would never see each other again. At her new husband’s request, Sarah devoted herself to studying Peguan, the language of the Mon people, and into that language she translated the New Testament, gospel tracts, and her husband’s work on the life of Christ.
She also rendered the first part of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress into Burmese and compiled a hymnal. Of the eight children she had with Judson, three died in infancy. After the birth of the last, in December 1844, her health, already weakened by recurring bouts of dysentery, gave way.
She set sail with her husband and their three eldest children for the United States, but died along the way, on September 1, 1845, and was buried on the island of Saint Helena. Her voluntary remaining on the field, even as a grieving widow, and the losses she endured in the midst of her work stand as a testimony of perseverance for missionaries to this day.
