Adoniram Judson Birthplace

From Judson, the Pioneer:

“HI, boys, there goes the Bell Rock alarm! Come on !” The boys of Maiden, Massachusetts, in the old Colonial days were always listening for the Bell Rock alarm. It was a church bell, but it wasn’t in a church tower. It was swung in a wooden frame on a rounding ledge of rock, where now a noble soldiers’ monument stands. It not only called the people to worship; it called the freeholders to town meeting, and in times of danger from Indians or other enemies it sounded a swift alarm. Just across the road from Bell Rock and the old-fashioned meeting-house stood, and still stands, the Ministry House, as the parsonage was called, where the early ministers of the Congregational church lived, and in the Bell Rock Ministry House was born, on August 9, 1788, a boy whose name will be known and honored as long as Bell Rock stands. They gave him his father’s name, Adoniram Judson, and he was destined to hear thousands of tinkling bells on high pagoda h’tees in a land far from Bell Rock, and to ring a bell himself that should wake up thousands to come to the rescue of men.

Now a private home, this was the “Old Parsonage.”

A plaque in 1930 read:

The parsonage, the first house built in 1651, burned 1724. The present house built in 1724. Birthplace of Rev. Adoniram Judson, American’s first foreign missionary 1788-1850. Malden – his birthplace, the ocean – his sepulcher converted Burmans and the Burman bible – his monument his record is on high.

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• Digital Commonwealth