Susanna Wesley
This is the story of Susanna Wesley, 1669-1742 Mother of Charles and John Wesley, who were founders of the Methodist Church. Susanna and her husband, Samuel, had nineteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Her son Charles became a well-known hymn writer and her son John became the found of Methodism. Susanna was brought up in a Puritan home as the youngest of twenty-five children. As a teenager, she became a member of the Church of England. She became the wife of a chronically debt-ridden parish rector in an English village. She said, "I have had a large experience of what the world calls adverse fortune." Nonetheless, Susanna managed to pass down to her children Christian principles that stayed with them.
This is the story of Susanna Wesley, 1669-1742 Mother of Charles and John Wesley, who were founders of the Methodist Church. Susanna and her husband, Samuel, had nineteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Her son Charles became a well-known hymn writer and her son John became the found of Methodism.
Susanna was brought up in a Puritan home as the youngest of twenty-five children. As a teenager, she became a member of the Church of England. She became the wife of a chronically debt-ridden parish rector in an English village. She said, "I have had a large experience of what the world calls adverse fortune." Nonetheless, Susanna managed to pass down to her children Christian principles that stayed with them.
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THE HOME REBUILT. 99<br />
occasion. She wrote to her absent husband: "Jack<br />
bore his disease bravely, like a man, and indeed a Christian,<br />
without any complaint." It is<br />
probable either<br />
that they had the complaint in a mild form, or that<br />
some very effectual means were taken to prevent any<br />
permanent traces being left for all<br />
;<br />
the family had<br />
the reputation of being good-looking, and no mention<br />
is made by anyone, nor is there any lingering tradition,<br />
of their being marked. It may be said, perhaps, that<br />
in the absence of inoculation or vaccination this disfigurement<br />
was too common to excite any remark ;<br />
but it must be remembered that Charles <strong>Wesley</strong>'s wife<br />
had the small-pox in 1753, when she lived at Bristol,<br />
and, although she lay down a really handsome young<br />
woman of six- and -twenty, she rose up from that bed<br />
of sickness so disfigured as to become almost proverbial<br />
for plainness throughout the rest of her life.
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