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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210 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
not induce them to perpetuate the whole of his verses,<br />
and the epitaph now runs :<br />
" Here lies the body of<br />
MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY,<br />
Widow of the REV. SAMUEL WESLEY, M.A.<br />
(late Rector of Epworth, in Lincolnshire),<br />
who died July 23rd, 1742,<br />
Aged 73 years.<br />
She was the youngest daughter of the<br />
the Act<br />
R-EV. SAMUEL ANNESLEY, D.D., ejected by<br />
of Uniformity from the Rectory of St. Giles's,<br />
Cripplegate, Aug. 24th, 1662.<br />
She was the mother of nineteen children,<br />
of whom the most eminent were the<br />
REVS. JOHN and CHAELES WESLEY;<br />
the former of whom was, under God, the<br />
Founder of the Societies of the People<br />
called Methodists/'<br />
" In sure and certain hope to rise,<br />
And claim her mansion in the skies,<br />
A Christian here her flesh laid down,<br />
The cross exchanging for a crown."<br />
In 1869 Bunhill Fields, though long before closed<br />
to interments, was secured as a cemetery in perpetuity,<br />
planted with trees, and laid out with walks leading<br />
close to the most remarkable graves. The spot where<br />
Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong>'s remains are is where the numbers 17<br />
and 42 intersect on the outer wall, and a few yards<br />
west- by-south from the tomb of John Bunyan, who<br />
was alive and preaching in her long-past girlhood.<br />
An obelisk of Sicilian marble erected to her memory
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