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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218 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
besotted husband, who, nevertheless, seems to have<br />
preserved some kind of affection for her. She had<br />
several children, who died, much to her grief, in their<br />
babyhood ;<br />
but a daughter, named Amelia, is<br />
supposed<br />
to have lived for some years, even if she did not survive<br />
her mother. She is said to have retained the traces<br />
of her youthful beauty till quite late in life. She had<br />
been the trusted friend, and, in his latter days, the<br />
nurse of her uncle Matthew, who was very good to<br />
her in a pecuniary sense. In 1743 she was living at<br />
Stanmore in Middlesex; soon after she became a<br />
Methodist, and saw a good deal of her brothers.<br />
They were persuaded that the Clifton Hot-wells,<br />
rightly used, would cure most physical evils, and<br />
accordingly sent her there. They had many friends in<br />
Bristol and its neighbourhood, and their sister was<br />
received by a Mrs. Vigor, with whom she remained for<br />
several months. In the autumn of 1745, she was at<br />
home again, and wrote a letter to Charles, in which<br />
she spoke affectionately of her husband :<br />
" London, Frith Street,<br />
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