Emily Chubbuck, born in 1817, was the daughter of parents of the Baptist persuasion, living in the State of New York. She was the fifth child of a large family in such poor circumstances that, when she was only eleven years old, she was sent to work at a woollen factory, where her recollections were only of “noise and filth, bleeding hands and aching feet, and a very sad heart;” but happily for her, the frost stopped the works during the winter months, and she was able to go to school; and, after two years, the family removed to a country farm. They were all very delicate, and her elder sisters were one after the other slowly dying of decline. This, with their “conversions” and baptisms, deepened Emily’s longing to give the tokens required by her sect for Christian membership, but they came slowly and tardily with her, and she quaintly told how one day she was addressed by one of the congregation whose prayers had been asked for her, “What! this little girl not converted yet? How do you suppose we can waste any more time in praying for you?” Her intelligence was very great, and in 1832, when her mother wanted her to become a milliner, she entreated to be allowed to engage herself as a school teacher. “I stood as tall as I could,” she says, when she went to offer herself, and she was accepted, although only fifteen. The system was that of “boarding round”—i.e. the young mistress had to live a week alternately at each house, and went from thence to her school, but she found this so uncomfortable that she ended by sleeping at home every night. She struggled on, teaching in various schools, doing needlework in after-hours, trying to improve herself, and always contending with great delicacy of health, which must have made it most trying to cope with what she calls in one of her letters “a little regiment of wild cats” for about seven years, when some of the friends she had made obtained of two sisters who kept a boarding school at Utica that she should be admitted there to pursue the higher branches of study for a year or two, and then to repay them by her services as a teacher.
The two ladies, Miss Urania and Miss Cynthia Sheldon, and their widowed sister, Mrs. Anable, proved Emily’s kindest friends, and made a thoroughly happy home for her. She was
very frail and nervous, but of great power of influence, and even while still only a pupil had this gift. Here she spent the rest of her maiden days, and here she supplied the failure of her labours in needlework by contributions to magazines, generally under the nom de plume of Fanny Forester. They were chiefly poems and short tales, and were popular enough to bring in a sum that was very important to the Chubbuck family. The day’s employment was very full, and she stole the time required from her rest. Late one night, Miss Sheldon seeing a light in the room looked in, and found her trembling in nervous agitation, holding her head with her hands and her manuscript before her; and when gently rebuked, and entreated to lie down at once, she exclaimed with a burst of tears, “Oh! Miss Urania, I must write; I must help my poor parents.”
Her brave and dutiful endeavours prospered so much that she was actually able to buy a house for them. It was during her stay at Utica that she was baptized, and several of her writings were expressly for the Baptist Sunday School Union; and though others were of a more secular cast, all were such as could only be composed by a religious woman. A little book of hers fell into the hands of Dr. Judson, and struck him so much that he said, “I should be glad to know her. A lady who writes so well ought to write better.” She was then at Philadelphia, and at the moment of his introduction to her was undergoing the process of vaccination. As soon as it was over he entered into conversation with her with some abruptness, demanding of her how she could employ her talents in writings so trifling and so little spiritual as those he had read.
Emily met the rebuke without offence, but defended herself by describing the necessity of her case, with her indigent parents depending upon her; so that her work must almost of necessity be popular and profitable, though, as a duty, she avoided all that could be of doubtful tendency.
The missionary was thoroughly softened, and not only acquitted her, but begged her to undertake the biography of his wife Sarah: and this threw them much together. He was fifty-seven, she twenty-eight, when he offered himself to her in the following letter, sent with a watch:—
“I hand you, dearest, a charmed watch. It always comes back to me, and brings its wearer with it. I gave it to Ann when a hemisphere divided us, and it brought her safely and
surely to my arms. I gave it to Sarah during her husband’s lifetime (not then aware of the secret), and the charm, though slow in its operation, was true at last.”
The charm worked. Emily Chubbuck was ready to follow Dr. Judson to the deadly climate of Burmah, to share his labours, and become a mother to the babies he had left there.
They were married on the 2nd of June, 1846, and five weeks later sailed for Burmah, leaving the three children at school.