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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212 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
CHAPTER XVI.<br />
SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS.<br />
THE family group that surrounded Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong>'s<br />
death-bed consisted of her daughters Emilia, <strong>Susanna</strong>,<br />
Hetty, Anne, and Martha, and her son John. Emilia,<br />
Mrs. Harper, was now fifty years of age, a widow, and<br />
childless for ; though an infant had been born to her,<br />
it speedily died. She had known but little comfort<br />
during either her single or her married life; her<br />
temper was exacting and not very sweet she was conscious<br />
of possessing talents, and painfully aware<br />
;<br />
that<br />
she had had no opportunity of shining. In youth<br />
she was engaged to a Mr. Leybourne, and though in<br />
consequence of the disapproval of Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong> and<br />
Samuel the match was broken off, Emilia was not a<br />
woman to forget, or to love again readily. This disappointment<br />
embittered her whole life. She was very<br />
fond of her mother, and her affection for John, who<br />
was eleven years her junior, had a good deal of the<br />
maternal element in it, but when Hetty stumbled she<br />
was hard upon her. Poverty takes a great deal of<br />
the sweetness out of a woman's nature, and after her<br />
marriage she suffered even more from this cause than<br />
when in her girlhood money and clothes were scarce<br />
at Epworth. Mr. Harper was scarcely able to maintain<br />
himself, the profits of her school did not go very<br />
far, she fell into ill-health, had to sell her clothes in
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