Margery Boyden, Scudder Association Foundation Historian

This is the most important letter I will ever write. It concerns your future—and the tomorrows of the innumerable human beings who share this vulnerable, fragile planet with you.
It involves changes that must be made if environmental disasters are to be avoided. The response to this challenge will shape the future of the entire human race.

In the sense of being “the first to do a particular thing.” Elizabeth Scudder, the daughter of John Scudder and Mary (King) Scudder, was a “pioneer” among American Scudders when she was the first to marry into a Dutch New Netherland family. Her husband was John2 Alburtus whose parents were Pietro1 Alberti and Judith Jans Manje, documented in New Netherland by 1635 and 1642 respectively

It was a time of religious and political turmoil when John Scudder grew up in western Kent, England, between the power centers of British political and ecclesiastical might, at London and Canterbury. John Scudder was the nephew of one of the most widely known Christian authors and reform-minded ministers in England, Rev. Henry Scudder.

To continue the story of John and Mary (King) Scudder of Newtown, Long Island from our Spring 2021 journal issue,[2] articles in this Summer/Fall 2021 issue will share more about this couple’s pioneering activities and about some of their remarkable pioneering posterity who are not generally recognized as Scudders, due to their descent through a female line.

To continue the story of John and Mary (King) Scudder of Newtown, Long Island from our Spring 2021 journal issue,[2] articles in this Summer/Fall 2021 issue will share more about this couple’s pioneering activities and about some of their remarkable pioneering posterity who are not generally recognized as Scudders, due to their descent through a female line.

 An early writer on Japan said the people were as different from us as if they had dropped from the planet Mars. It is interesting to note that in Japan a common word for foreigner is “i-jin” – the Different Man. If they seem different to us, is it strange if we seem different to them? We write in horizontal lines, they in perpendicular columns; we read from left to right; they from right to left; we say, “The man went to Yokohama”; they say, “Yokohama to went man”. Using the saw and plane, we push the tool from us; they draw it toward them. On the summit of Fujiyama there is a bubbling spring of water. What, are even the mountains upside-down. Which of us really is the different man?

The early immigrant Scudders and missionary-minded Scudders featured in this issue had unique opportunities to engage with people of other races, ethnicities, cultures, religions and politics that were different than their own. They moved to different countries or colonies where they were considered the strangers by those who were already present.

There is much to consider about the preparation and trials that were required of the Scudder missionaries to India, and other missionaries in the family to other mission locations around the globe. Dr. John Scudder’s brother-in-law Jared Bell Waterbury and Dr. John’s son Henry Martyn Scudder have preserved some of these.

We include a separate artifacts article with newspaper clippings to show honors paid to Dr. Ida on the 100th anniversary of her birth, fifty years ago.