state that a Christian’s devotion to God should supersede any concerns about family and friends. At a turning point in Mary Bosanquet’s individuation, she proclaimed that loving her parents more than God was now inconceivable and that she had to accept their disapproval. Bosanquet cited the example of Jesus, who asked his disciples to give up the ties of family, saying “he that loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.”32 Eighteenth-century biblical commentator Matthew Henry interpreted this passage as an acknowledgment that disciples should expect persecution and avoid the concerns of the world. This directive is similar to the commandment to worship no other idols before God, and Methodists interpreted this commandment as a caution against idolizing people by allowing them to become more important than God. In Elizabeth Hayden’s narrative, she wrote that she had worshipped her mother. In 1789, she recounted, “Neithr of my Parents were in the narrow Way, and my Mother whom I idolized, was very tender and Affectionate (and many Years I had to wean me from my Idol).”33
Through exposure to religious literature and practice, children garnered the right to be spiritual authorities over their parents, inverting the parentchild relationship.34 In a letter to Charles Wesley in 1738, Mrs. Clagget wrote about her experience of being converted by her daughter, who had been secretly attending Methodist meetings. At first, she opposed her daughter’s evangelicalism, until the mother was converted by the combination of seeing Charles Wesley preach and listening to her daughter. She admitted to the curious inversion of finding her daughter spiritually wiser than herself. Clagget wrote, “[A]t about 13 [she] seemed utterly to have renounced the World and gave her Selfe wholy to God. I know See what before I had no notion off how far she has been made Instrumental to the bringing about my own Salvation, She everyday watched for opportunities of Shewing me the Danger I was in by being too Anxious about Temporal things whilst I neglected the one thing needfull, telling me that she desired not to be Rich or great, at the Hazard of my Eternal happiness.”35
This story of a mother’s eventually joyful conversion under her daughter’s spiritual leadership was rare. More commonly, parents strenuously objected to their children’s evangelical conversion. As a result, young evangelical converts struggled with how to frame their relationships to their birth families. Converts could justify their seemingly rebellious behavior toward their parents by claiming that they owed their ultimate obedience to a higher spiritual authority. The theme of obedient disobedience within conversion narratives marked the sense that Methodists grappled with the conflict between the rules and customs of their birth family and the alternate codes and behaviors of their religious family.
The narratives of three young Methodist women, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, Hester Ann Roe Rogers, and Catherine Livingston Garrettson, recount a common theme of alienation from their birth families, as they joined in the mores and customs peculiar to their new evangelical family. These women were educated enough to create coherent narratives of considerable length and were prominent lay leaders of the eighteenth-century Methodist movement. They represented the exemplars of aspiration so precious to the wider family of transatlantic evangelicals. Mary Bosanquet became a leader within Methodism, influential in her control of a major Methodist center and known for her power as an exhorter and preacher. Hester Roe and Catherine Livingston were never as prominent as Bosanquet, and never as close to the Wesley brothers. Yet, in their own way, they were also extremely important. Livingston encouraged the establishment of Methodism in upstate New York, an arena that would become more important to Methodists as the nineteenth century progressed. Roe’s published narrative became exemplary of the struggle of evangelical women and circulated throughout the English Atlantic world.
These narratives establish common stages that new converts would experience when joining Methodism in the eighteenth century. Their narratives follow a process of deconstructing the old codes of the birth families and joining a new family as a convert through their “new birth.” With slight variations, these narratives trace a common path to the new family: (1) a realization of difference, which can begin at an early age or in the teenage years; (2) recognition of an alternate religious life, resulting in conversion; (3) conflict and alienation from the ways of their birth family; (4) isolation within their birth family (becoming the lone, suffering saint); and (5) leaving their old family to join with the new family.
Figure 3. Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, engraving by John Chester Buttre, ca. 1855–85. Courtesy of the Drew University Methodist Collection.
Mary Bosanquet’s Narrative
Mary Bosanquet Fletcher (1739–1815) wrote in her manuscript autobiography that she had felt, as a precocious four-year-old, that “god heard prayer.”36 By the time she was five years old, she began to distinguish between sinful and good behavior and wondered about the fate of her soul.37 From the beginning, Bosanquet felt different from other members of her family, who attended the Church of England but had little zeal.38 In 1746, she discovered Methodism through her sister and their servant, and Bosanquet dramatically recalled the moment of recognizing the alternative to her natural family’s religious practices: “I well remember the very Spot we stood on, and the words She Spake, which tho we were but a few minutes together sunk so deeply into my heart they were never after Erase. My reflections were suited to a child not 7 years old. I thought if I became a Methodist I was sure to be saved and determined if Ever I could get at this people whatever it cost I would be one of them.”39
Later in her childhood, she set about to conform her life to evangelical norms. This behavior marked her as different from her three siblings, and her parents were often perplexed by her strangeness and disobedience.40 She recalled her mother’s chastising words: “that girl is the most preverse creature that ever lived, I cant think what is come into her.”41 Bosanquet continued to frame her childhood journey as a rebellious and isolating process, separating her even from the sister who had introduced her to Methodism. Her elder sister never converted; instead she married in 1754, leaving Bosanquet without a religious ally in the family.
Throughout her teenage years, Bosanquet sustained her evangelical ambitions. Her parents fired the Methodist servant and hid religious tracts from Bosanquet, who began to feel like a lone, suffering saint. In 1755, Bosanquet continued to glean evangelical ideas from family friends and literature, and she abstained from going to the theater, a frequent family activity. Her father attempted to dissuade her, remarking that she acted as if “all dress and company, nay, all agreeable liveliness, and the whole spirit of the world, is sinful.”42 The family was based on a large estate in Leytonstone, Essex, and they frequently traveled in a fashionable circuit of bucolic resorts and urban entertainments.43 They had asked her to endure public entertainments quietly, “to do as they did and not bring reproach upon them in a Strange place. This seemed a very reasonable request—but alas, I could not comply; for the Spirit of the worlds was contrary that of Christ.”44 She wrote that she was afraid of “snares,” which in Methodist code refers to both the public traps of entertainment and trifling diversions, as well as the more intimate traps of romantic love.
Methodists often felt the tension between obedience to their blood family and the demands of the new family. This tension was particularly difficult, because Christianity promoted filial obedience as a central commandment yet also encouraged following individual conscience in spiritual matters. Bosanquet reflected on this central quandary between individual religious yearnings and filial obedience, when she wrote about conforming to the dress required of her class, despite her desires to dress more simply for religious reasons. “I plainly saw the throwing of dress would be to my relations a great trial—I loved my parents, and it hurt me to disoblige them—I sought for arguments to quench that little Spark of Light wich was kindling in my Soul. Conscious they could not see in me my Light—and knowing that obedience to parents was one of the first dutys—I did so far quench it that I put on again many of the things that I had thrown off.—my acquaintance took much notice of me, and I was so afraid of Losing their good opinion
