Sarah Osborn's World

by Brekus, Catherine A.

  53. SH, Memoirs, 68; Samuel Moodey, Judas the Traitor Hung Up in Chains (Boston, 1714), iii.

  54. SH, Memoirs, 68–69; Psalm 73:26–27; Revelation 6–8.

  55. Barbara E. Lacey, ed. The World of Hannah Heaton: The Diary of an Eighteenth-Century New England Farm Woman (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press 2003), 24.

  56. SH, Memoirs, 69.

  57. Henry Gibbs, Bethany; or, The House of Mourning (Boston: T. Green, 1714), 4, 9, 12–13, 11; Nathanael Appleton, A Great Man Fallen in Israel (Boston: B. Green, 1724), 34. See also Benjamin Wadsworth, Considerations, to Prevent Murmuring and Promote Patience in Christians, Under Afflictive Providences (Boston: B. Green, 1706), 14, citing Numbers 14; Flavel, A Token for Mourners; or, The Advice of Christ to a Distressed Mother, Bewailing the Death of Her Dear and Only Son (London: Thomas Pankhurst, 1694), 13.

  58. See Gibbs, Bethany, 11; Flavel, Token for Mourners, 13; John Willison, The Afflicted Man’s Companion (Philadelphia: W. Young, 1788), 205, citing Leviticus 10:3 and Job 40:4; Thomas Brooks, The Silent Soul (1659; rpt. Boston: Boone, 1728), 12, citing Genesis 45:8; Benjamin Wadsworth, Hearty Submission and Resignation to the Will of God (Boston: B. Green, 1716), 3, citing 2 Samuel 15:26; Brooks, Silent Soul, 47, citing Isaiah 53:7.

  59. Wadsworth, Considerations, to Prevent Murmuring, 3, 13.

  60. Ibid., 14; Appleton, Great Man Fallen in Israel, 34–35.

  61. Thomas Skinner, The Mourner Admonished (Boston: Rogers and Fowle, 1746), 28–29; Gibbs, Bethany, 12.

  62. Flavel, Token for Mourners, 8–9. Luke records three occasions when Jesus said “weep not”: 7:13, 8:52, 23:28. Flavel’s text was Luke 7:13.

  63. Wadsworth, Considerations, to Prevent Murmuring, 24–25.

  64. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 218.

  65. Diary of Experience (Wight) Richardson [transcript], February 1753, MHS; Lacey, World of Hannah Heaton, 25; Sue Lane McCulley and Dorothy Zayatz Baker, eds., The Silent and Soft Communion: The Spiritual Narratives of Sarah Pierpont Edwards and Sarah Prince Gill (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005), 75.

  66. SH, Memoirs, 69.

  67. On eighteenth-century funerals, see Gillian B. Anderson, “The Funeral of Samuel Cooper,” New England Quarterly 50, no. 4 (December 1977): 644–59.

  68. SH, Memoirs, 70, quoting Hebrews 4:15.

  69. Ibid., 70.

  70. Ibid., 65, emphasis mine.

  71. SH, “The Nature and Design of Infant Baptism,” in WSH 2: 122, 129, 124.

  72. Levi Hart, A Sermon on the Sacred Obligations of Christian Ministers to Improve Their Personal Sorrows for the Benefit of Their People (New London: T. Green, 1789), 6. His text was Ezekiel 24:15–18.

  73. Flavel, Token for Mourners, 21; A Pastoral Visit to the Afflicted (Boston: n.p., 1737), 4.

  74. Pastoral Visit to the Afflicted, 7.

  75. Thomas Brooks, The Silent Soul (Boston: Boone, 1728), 126, and the Epistle Dedicatory (this book was first published in the seventeenth century); Flavel, “The Epistle Dedicatory,” Token for Mourners, n.p.

  76. SO, Memoir, [64], citing Exodus 20:3.

  77. FL, 49–51.

  78. SO, Memoir, [113].

  79. Ibid.

  80. SO, Diary, September 14, 1753, September 10, 1754, September 18, 1760.

  CHAPTER SIX. NO IMAGINARY THING

  1. SO, Nature, 2–4.

  2. Benjamin Robins, A Discourse Concerning the Nature and Certainty of Sir Isaac Newton’s Methods of Fluxions, and of Prime and Ultimate Ratios (London: printed for W. Innys and R. Manby, 1735); Edward Stillingfleet, A Discourse Concerning the Nature and Grounds of the Certainty of Faith (London: Henry Mortlock, 1688); JE, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (Boston: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1741); Jonathan Dickinson, The Witness of the Spirit (Boston: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1740). 4; Joseph Bellamy, True Religion Delineated; or, Experimental Religion (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1750);

  3. SO, Nature, 3.

  4. According to the digital collection Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639–1800, 7,373 titles were published in America during these years. This number includes titles that were printed more than once. The eight titles are: Mary Rowlandson, Sovereignty and Goodness of God (Cambridge: Samuel Green, 1682); Bathsheba Bowers, An Alarm Sounded to Prepare the Inhabitants of the World to Meet the Lord in the Way of his Judgments (New York: William Bradford, 1709); Mercy Wheeler, An Address to Young People (Boston: n.p., 1733); Elizabeth Mixer, An Account of Some Spiritual Experiences and Rapturous and Pious Expressions (New London: T. Green, 1736); Ann Maylem, A Short Narrative of the Unjust Proceedings of Mr. George Gardner of Newport Distiller, Against Ann Maylem Widow (Newport: Ann Franklin, 1742); Sarah Parsons Moorhead, To the Reverend Mr. James Davenport (Boston: Charles Harrison, 1742); Sophia Hume, An Exhortation to the Inhabitants of the Province of South Carolina (Philadelphia: William Bradford, 1747); and SO, Nature. Counting the number of books written by women and published in America is complicated. The Evans collection includes a category titled “women as authors,” but this category contains many books that were about women but not written by them. I have chosen to count only first editions because some books, especially Mary Rowlandson’s narrative, were published in many editions. I have not included works that contained extracts from women’s writings: for example, Cotton Mather, Memorials of Early Piety. Occurring in the Holy Life and Joyful Death of Mrs. Jerusha Oliver. With Some Account of her Christian Experiences, Extracted from Her Reserved Papers: And Published, for the Service of Christianity (Boston: T. Green, 1711).

  5. SH, Memoirs, 92–93.

  6. Susannah Haggar’s marriage is mentioned in a court case. See Jane Fletcher Fiske, Gleanings from Newport County Files, 1659–1783 (Boxford, Mass.: n.p., 1998), no. 810. On the marriages of John and Edward Osborn, see James N. Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island, 1636–1850. First Series: Births, Marriages and Deaths, vol. 8 (Providence: Narragansett Historical Publishing, 1896), 423.

  7. SH, Memoirs, 96.

  8. Ibid., 64, 89.

  9. SO, Diary, December 15, 1761. On Bobey’s birthdate, see SO to JF, May 16, 1754, AAS. Osborn described Bobey as ten years old in 1754, which means that he was born in 1743 or 1744.

  10. SO to JF, May 16, 1754, AAS.

  11. Ibid.

  12. SO to JF, June 4, 1754, AAS.

  13. Samuel Hopkins claimed that the women’s society met regularly for more than fifty years after its founding in 1741 (SH, Memoirs, 71). But in a letter to Joseph Fish, Osborn explained that it had been dropped for several years (SO to JF, May 10, 1761, AAS).

  14. SH, Life and Character, 113; SO, Nature, title page.

  15. SO, Nature, 3.

  16. SO, Diary, November 17, 1760, August 21, August 18, 1753.

  17. Ibid., December 16, 1753. See also SH, Memoirs, 130.

  18. SO, Diary, July 29, 1753.

  19. SO, Nature, title page. The 1755 edition had slightly different wording on the title page from that of later editions. For example, the 1793 edition changed “was wrote” to “was written.”

  20. On Thomas Prince’s involvement in the publication of Osborn’s letter, see SH, Memoirs, 157.

  21. Maylem, Short Narrative; SO, Nature, 3.

  22. Anne Bradstreet, Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning (Boston: John Foster, 1678); Rowlandson, Sovereignty and Goodness of God; Sarah Goodhue, The Copy of a Valedictory and Monitory Writing (Cambridge, Mass.: n.p., 1681); Preface to Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (London: Stephen Bowtell, 1650); Elaine Showalter, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (New York: Knopf, 2009), 3.

  23. James Kendall Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal, “History of New England,” 1630–1649 (New York: Scribner’s, 1908), 2: 225; The Copy of a Letter Written by Mr. Thomas Parker (London: J. Field, 1650), 13; Cotton Mather, Awakening Thoughts on the Sleep of Death (Boston: Timothy Green, 1712), iv.

  24. Hannah Callowhi
ll Penn, London, 26th of the 3d month, 1724 (Philadelphia: Samuel Keimer, 1724); Sarah Fiske, A Confession of Faith; or, A Summary of Divinity Drawn Up by a Young Gentlewoman, in the 25th Year of Her Age (Boston: B. Green, 1704), i.

  25. Goodhue, Copy of a Valedictory and Monitory Writing; Mary Mollineux, Fruits of Retirement; or, Miscellaneous Poems, Moral and Divine (Philadelphia: Samuel Keimer, 1729).

  26. Ebenezer Prime, A Sermon Preached in Oyster Bay Feb. 27, 1743–4: At the Funeral of Mrs. Freelove Wilmot, Consort of the Rev. Mr. Walter Wilmot (New York: J. Parker, 1744), 62.

  27. Nathaniel Appleton, The Christian Glorying in Tribulation from a Sense of Its Happy Fruits. A Discourse Occasion’d by the Death of that Pious and Afflicted Gentlewoman Mrs. Martha Gerrish. . . . To Which Are Annexed Some of Mrs. Gerrish’s Letters (Boston: J. Draper, 1736), 66.

  28. Elizabeth White, The Experiences of God’s Gracious Dealing with Mrs. Elizabeth White (Boston: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1741); Elizabeth Bury, An Account of the Life and Death of Mrs. Elizabeth Bury (Boston: D. Henchman, 1743); Elizabeth Singer Rowe, The History of Joseph. A Poem (Philadelphia: B. Franklin, 1739); Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Devout Exercises of the Heart in Meditation and Soliloquy, Prayer and Praise (Boston: J. Blanchard, 1742).

  29. Charles Chauncy, Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New-England (Boston: Rogers and Fowle, for Samuel Eliot in Cornhill, 1743), 240; “Advice to Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley,” JE Papers, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, Mass.; Nathan Bowen, “Extracts from Interleaved Almanacs of Nathan Bowen, 1742–1799,” Essex Institute of Historical Collections 41 (1955): 169; South Carolina Gazette, June 21, 1742, quoted in Timothy D. Hall, Contested Boundaries: Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994), 58. On women during the revivals, see Catherine A. Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740–1845 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 23–67.

  30. Ebenezer Frothingham, The Articles of Faith and Practice, with the Covenant, That Is Confessed by the Separate Churches of Christ in General in This Land (Newport: J. Franklin, 1750), 360–61; Joshua Hempstead, The Diary of Joshua Hempstead (New London: n.p., 1901), 402–3.

  31. SO, Nature, 3, 4, 13, 5.

  32. Bury, Account of the Life and Death, 123, 96; Hannah Housman, The Power and Pleasure of the Divine Life (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1755). Both books were originally printed in England: Bury’s in 1720 in Bristol and Housman’s in 1744 in London. Osborn mentioned Bury’s book in SO to JF, February 4, 1747/8, AAS, and also in Diary, July 17, 1757. She mentioned Housman in Diary, March 10, 1758.

  33. Rowe, Devout Exercises, 132; Carol F. Karlsen and Laurie Crumpacker, eds., The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, 1754–1757 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 98–99; SA, Diary, July 18, 1749, MS 66939, CHS.

  34. SO, Diary, October 23, 1761. Since Defoe’s manual was not published in America until 1792, she must have read a copy imported from England. See Daniel Defoe, The Family Instructor, 13th ed. (London: Tho. Longman, Ch. Hitch and L. Hawes, 1751).

  35. See Sydney V. James, Colonial Rhode Island: A History (New York: Scribner’s, 1975), 199; George C. Mason, Annals of the Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport, R.I. (Newport: Redwood Library, 1891), 3.

  36. SH, Memoirs, 159.

  37. SO, Nature, 3.

  38. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emilius; or, A Treatise of Education (Edinburgh: A. Donaldson, 1768), quoted in Linda Kerber, “The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment—An American Perspective,” American Quarterly 28, no. 2 (Summer 1976): 194.

  39. Ebenezer Pemberton, Meditations on Divine Subjects: By Mrs. Mary Lloyd (New York: J. Parker, 1750), 22.

  40. Gezelena Rousby, To the Freeholders and Freemen of the City of New-York (New York: n.p., 1769); Anne Dutton, A Letter from Mrs. Anne Dutton to the Reverend G. Whitefield (Philadelphia: William Bradford, 1743); Martha Brewster, Poems on Divers Subjects (New London: Edes and Gill, 1757).

  41. Jane Dunlap, Poems upon Several Sermons Preached by the Rev’d, and Renowned, George Whitefield, While in Boston (Boston: Ezekiel Russell, 1771), 19.

  42. Phillis Wheatley, An Elegiac Poem . . . On the Death of George Whitefield (Boston: Ezekiel Russell, 1770); Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London: A. Bell, 1773).

  43. Kramnick, PER, xv.

  44. See William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2007).

  45. See D. Bruce Hindmarsh, “Reshaping Individualism: The Private Christian, Eighteenth-Century Religion and the Enlightenment,” in The Rise of the Laity in Evangelical Protestantism, ed. Deryck W. Lovegrove (New York: Routledge, 2002), 74; Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991), 205; Jerald C. Brauer, “Conversion: From Puritanism to Revivalism,” Journal of Religion 58, no. 3 (July 1978): 241. In The Self and the Sacred: Conversion and Autobiography in Early American Protestantism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998), Rodger M. Payne argues that eighteenth-century evangelicals “were able to embrace and sacralize the concept of the autonomous self” (8). Although I agree with Payne that evangelicals emphasized the individual, the word autonomous overstates the case.

  46. Josiah Smith, A Sermon, on the Character, Preaching &c. of the Rev. Mr. Whitefield (1740), in The Great Awakening: Documents Illustrating the Crisis and Its Consequences, ed. Alan Heimert and Perry Miller (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 65.

  47. D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 146–48; Barbara E. Lacey, ed., The World of Hannah Heaton: The Diary of an Eighteenth-Century New England Farm Woman (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press 2003), 16; SO, Nature, 3, 5–6.

  48. SO, Nature, title page.

  49. Caroline Belsey, “Afterword: A Future for Materialist-Feminist Criticism,” in The Matter of Difference: Materialist-Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, ed. Valerie Wayne (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 262. On the sexually egalitarian possibilities of the Enlightenment, see Margaret C. Jacob, “Freemasonry, Women, and the Paradox of the Enlightenment,” in Women and the Enlightenment, ed. Margaret Hunt, Margaret Jacob, Phyllis Mack, and Ruth Perry (New York: Haworth, 1984); Jonathan Irvine Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 82–96.

  50. Susan Juster, Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 218. See also Jane Shaw, “Religious Experience and the Formation of the Early Enlightenment Self,” in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. Roy Porter (New York: Routledge, 1997), 70–71; Phyllis Mack, “Women and the Enlightenment: An Introduction,” in Women and the Enlightenment, 9–10.

  51. See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989); Joan B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 135.

  52. On “democratic political agency” as a feature of the public sphere, see Ruth H. Bloch, “Inside and Outside the Public Sphere,” William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 1 (January 2005): 99. On counterpublics, see Joanna Brooks, “The Early American Public Sphere and the Emergence of a Black Print Counterpublic,” William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 1 (January 2005), 67–92.

  53. The editions were Boston: S. Kneeland, 1755; London: Thomas Bayley, 1763; Newport: S. Hall, 1764; Danbury, Conn.: N. Douglas, 1793; and Providence: J. Carter, 1793.

  54. WJE 26: 98–103; see the copy of SO, Nature, at AAS; 1 Corinthians 11:3.

  CHAPTER SEVEN. PINCHING POVERTY

  1. SO, Diary, October 3, 1757. The reference to “Mr. Elot” is to Joseph Eliot, A Copy of a Letter Found i
n the Study of the Reverend Mr. Joseph Belcher, Late of Dedham, Since His Decease (Boston: B. Green, 1725), 3.

  2. SO, Diary, October 3, June 7, October 17, October 13, 1757.

  3. SO, Diary, August 19, 1757, November 22, 1759, February 11, 1757.

  4. SO, Diary, May 10, 1757; SO to JF, November 2, 1761, AAS.

  5. See T. H. Breen, “‘Baubles of Britain’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 119 (May 1988): 78. See also Breen, “Narrative of Commercial Life: Consumption, Ideology, and Community on the Eve of the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 50, no. 3 (July 1993): 471–501; Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (New York: Routledge, 1993); Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982).

  6. See Sheila Skemp, “A Social and Cultural History of Newport, Rhode Island, 1720–1765” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1974), 361; NM, June 19, 1758, May 23, 1763; George Champlin Mason, Reminiscences of Newport (Newport: Charles E. Hammett, Jr., 1884), 178.

  7. On the standard of living, see Lorena S. Walsh, “Urban Amenities and Rural Sufficiency: Living Standards and Consumer Behavior in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1643–1777,” Journal of Economic History 43 (March 1983): 109–117; Gloria L. Main, “The Standard of Living in Southern New England, 1640–1773,” William and Mary Quarterly 45, no. 1 (January 1988): 124–34; Gloria L. Main and Jackson T. Main, “The Red Queen in New England?” William and Mary Quarterly 56, no. 1 (January 1999): 121–50. For a different perspective, see Billy G. Smith, “Toward a History of the Standard of Living in British North America: Comment,” William and Mary Quarterly 45, no. 1 (January 1988): 163–66. On the Tates, see Stephen A. Mrozowski, The Archaeology of Class in Urban America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 49, 57–58. On the eighteenth-century economy, see Jon Butler, Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 50–88.