Eliza Grew Jones
Eliza Grew Jones | |
|---|---|
 Missionary to Burma and Siam | |
| Born | March 30, 1803 |
| Died | March 28, 1838 (aged 34) |
Eliza Grew Jones (March 30, 1803[1] – March 28, 1838[2]) was an American Baptist missionary and lexicographer. She created a romanized script for writing the Siamese language, and created the first Siamese-English dictionary.
Biography
[edit]Eliza Coltman Grew was born on March 30, 1803. Her father, Rev. Henry Grew, was a native of Providence, Rhode Island. Presaging her future accomplishments, an early school teacher noted that she had an unusual ability in languages, learning Greek without the aid of a teacher.[3]
She married Rev. Dr. John Taylor Jones on July 14, 1830.[4] Her husband was ordained in Boston two weeks later under the American Baptist Missionary Union, and the couple was then assigned to work in Burma. They lived there for over two years before being transferred to Siam.
Jones' first large work was a Siamese-English dictionary that she completed in December 1833, after she had been transferred to Siam. It was not published due to the difficulty of printing with Siamese type, and thought to be lost until an untitled manuscript in the British Museum Library was identified in 2007 as an extant copy of the lost Jones dictionary.[5] Later, she also created a romanized script for writing the Siamese language. She wrote portions of Biblical history in Siamese.
In Burma and Thailand, she gave birth to four children, two of whom died in childhood.
Jones died in Bangkok of cholera on March 28, 1838. She is buried in the Bangkok Protestant Cemetery.[2]
References
[edit]- ^ "Jones, Eliza Grew 1803–1838". Archived from the original on 2008-05-27. Retrieved 2008-02-24.
- ^ a b Locke, John Goodwin (1853). Book of the Lockes: A Genealogical and Historical Record of the Descendants of William Locke, of Woburn. James Munroe and Company. p. 269.
- ^ Sigourney 1851:294,296.
- ^ Harrison, Jerry Norman (1995). A Few More Descendants of Lewis Jones, 1603-1684. Heritage Books. p. 132. ISBN 0-7884-0219-6.
- ^ Dockum, Rikker (2007). From Lost to Online: A Digital eText + Image Edition of the First Thai-English Dictionary (PDF). 17th Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society.
Further reading
[edit]- Dana Lee Robert, American Women in Mission: a social history of their thought and practice, Mercer University Press (1997)
- Eliza G. Jones, Memoir of Mrs. Eliza G. Jones, Cornell University Library (March 21, 2007)
- Sigourney, Lydia Howard. 1851. Letters to My Pupils: With Narrative and Biographical Sketches. (Her former teacher wrote of her on pp. 294–302.)
Protestant missions to Southeast Asia | ||
|---|---|---|
| Background |  | |
| People | ||
| Missionary agencies | ||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
- 1803 births
- 1838 deaths
- Writers from Providence, Rhode Island
- American lexicographers
- Creators of writing systems
- Baptist missionaries in Thailand
- Baptist missionaries in Myanmar
- Women linguists
- Women lexicographers
- Deaths from cholera
- Burials at the Bangkok Protestant Cemetery
- 19th-century American women scientists
- 19th-century American women writers
- 19th-century American writers
- Baptist missionaries from the United States
- Female Christian missionaries
- American women non-fiction writers
- American expatriates in Thailand
- American expatriates in Myanmar
- 19th-century Baptists
- Missionary linguists
- 19th-century lexicographers
- Infectious disease deaths in Thailand