“The Second Great Awakening”

Haystack Monument – Williams College

The Scudder’s involvement with India Medical Missions can be traced to a thunderstorm at a New England college in 1806. Five students from Williams College in western Massachusetts took shelter from a thunderstorm in a haystack. At the Haystack Prayer Meeting, they came to the common conviction that “the field is the world” and inspired the creation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions four years later.

Dr. John Scudder and his wife embarked for Ceylon in 1819 beginning a 200 year tradition of service.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sounded a clarion that was heard by the youth of America caught up in the age of Romanticism sweeping the country in the early 19th century.

A recent medical graduate of Princeton, John Scudder, heard the call and responded.He was the first of many generations of Scudders to hear it.  A calling that reverberates through the Association to this day.

1000 Years of Service

Reverend, Dr. John Scudder Sr. 1793-1855

Young Dr. Scudder began a tradition of family service to what has amounted to more than 1,100 combined years of medical mission  by 42 members of four generations of the Scudder family  in India.

To discover what John’s vision has become today, click on Medical Missions