Boardman, George Dana

BOARDMAN, GEORGE DANA: 1. Baptist foreign missionary; b. at Livermore, Me., Feb. 8, 1801; d. at Tavoy, Burma, Feb. 11, 1831. In 1824 he was a resident licentiate in Andover Theological Seminary. In 1825 he went out to Burma under the Baptist Board of Missions, which had accepted his services in 1823, but owing to the Burmese war he could not reach that country till 1827. After a year at Maulmain he opened the new station at Tavoy, 150 miles north, and there he immersed the first Karen convert—Ko Tha Byu. From this center he prosecuted a very successful missionary work, but pulmonary disease caused his death after less than three years.

Bibliography: A. King, Good Fight, or G. D. Boardman and the Burman Mission, Boston, 1875.

2. American Baptist, son of the preceding; b. at Tavoy, Burma, Aug. 18, 1828; d. at Atlantic City, N. J., Apr. 28, 1903. He was graduated at Brown in 1852 and at the Newton Theological Institution 1855; was pastor in South Carolina 1855–1856; in Rochester, N. Y., 1856–84; of the First Baptist Church, Philadelphia, 1864–94. He was president of the American Baptist Missionary Union (1880–84), and of the Christian Arbitration and Peace Society of America. His publications were for the most part studies of Biblical texts of an exegetical character and include Studies in the Creative Week (New York, 1877), in the Model Prayer (1879), and in the Mountain Instruction (1881); Epiphanies of the Risen Lord (1879); The Divine Man from the Nativity to the Temptation (1887); University Lectures on the Ten Commandments (1889); The Kingdom (1899); The Church (1901); Our Risen King's Forty Days (Philadelphia, 1902).

Bibliography: Life and Light. Thoughts from the Writings of George Dana Boardman, with Memorabilia, Philadelphia, 1905.