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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22 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
CHAPTER IV.<br />
LATER MARRIED LIFE.<br />
IT was early in 1697 that the <strong>Wesley</strong>s<br />
removed to<br />
Epworth, on the opposite side of the county of Lincoln,<br />
which, though only a small market town with about<br />
2,000 inhabitants, was the principal place in the Isle<br />
of Axholme, a district ten miles long by four broad,<br />
enclosed by the rivers Trent, Don, and Idle. The<br />
church is an ancient structure, dedicated to St.<br />
Andrew, and the rectory was at that time a palace in<br />
comparison with the "mud hut" at South Ormsby.<br />
It was not a brick or stone-built house, but a threestoried<br />
and five-gabled timber and plaster building,<br />
thatched with straw, and<br />
" containing a kitchinge, a<br />
hall, a parlour, a buttery, and three large upper rooms<br />
and some others for common use; and, also, a little<br />
"<br />
garden ; together with a large barn, a dove-cote, and<br />
a hemp kiln. The children had ample space now to<br />
roam about in as well as for ease and comfort indoors ;<br />
but there were fees to be paid on entrance into the<br />
living, furniture to be bought for the larger house, and,<br />
as the new rector determined to farm his own glebe,<br />
implements and cattle for that worse than amateur<br />
farming, for which a bookish man brought up in town
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