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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PARTINGS. 181<br />
and find they amount to above one hundred pounds,<br />
exclusive of Cousin Richardson's. Mrs. Knight, her<br />
(Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong>'s) landlady, seized all her quick stock,<br />
valued at above forty pounds, for fifteen pounds my<br />
father owed her, on Monday last, the day he was<br />
buried. And my brother this afternoon gives a note<br />
for the money, in order to get the stock at liberty to<br />
sell, for security of which he has the stock made over<br />
to him, and will be paid as it can be sold. My father<br />
was buried very frugally, yet decently, in the churchyard,<br />
according to his own desire.<br />
" It will be highly necessary to bring all accounts of<br />
what he owed you, that you may mark all the goods in<br />
the house as principal creditor, and thereby secure to<br />
my mother time and liberty to sell them to the best<br />
advantage.<br />
* * * * #<br />
" If you take London in your way, my mother<br />
desires that you will remember that she is a clergyman's<br />
widow. Let the Society give her what they<br />
please, she must be still in some degree burdensome to<br />
you, as she calls How it. do I envy you that glorious<br />
burden, and wish I could share it with you You must<br />
!<br />
put me in some way of getting a little money, that<br />
I<br />
may do something in the shipwreck of the family,<br />
though it be no more than furnishing a plank."<br />
All that was mortal of Samuel <strong>Wesley</strong> was laid in<br />
Epworth churchyard, and over his remains was placed<br />
a grit slab, supported by brickwork, and having cut on<br />
its surface an epitaph written by his widow. This was<br />
re-cut and repaired in<br />
1819 by Dr. Adam Clarke, and<br />
in 1872 the tomb was thoroughly restored by a lady<br />
living at Epworth.
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