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The Scudder Association Foundation journal is dedicated to preserving and sharing the remarkable 385-year Scudder family heritage in America. While our primary focus is on our philanthropic endeavors, we also have stewardship over many family records collected for more than 100 years.

Thirty years ago, in an earnest effort to call attention to significant errors to be found in numerous Scudder genealogies circulating the globe, David B. Scudder, the Scudder Association’s editor of Scudder Searches, warned:

The strong ROOT of the American Scudder Family Tree was a yeoman in England named Henry Skudder, who died at Horton Kirby, Kent in 1594/5, but it took more than 100 years of research to prove it.

The 29th daye of September beinge the Feast of St. Micaell the archangell in the yeere of our Lorde God one thousand fyve hundreth fourscore and fowre[teen] and the Sixxe and thirtieth yeere of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lady Elizabeth, by the grace of God Queene of England etc.

The Scudders of India have a long family tradition of devoting their lives to the assistance of others. But what if you were not a Scudder? When a Scudder took a bride, planning to return to India, did their vow include,” …to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse,

“I go from love to Christ and to souls. The very self-denial of the work allures me. It is my happiness to go.”
It is two hundred years from the time the Rev. John Scudder embarked on his trail-blazing journey as the first medical missionary from America to go to a foreign land, to minister to body and spirit of then unknown souls more than 8000 miles away