Sarah edwards one tree hill
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Edwards, Sarah Pierpont (1710–1758)
American mystic. Born Sarah Pierpont, Jan 9, 1710, in New Haven, Connecticut; died Oct 2, 1758, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; dau. of James Pierpont (pastor and co-founder of Yale College) and Mary Hooker (granddau. of Reverend Thomas Hooker who founded Hartford); m. Jonathan Edwards (pastor), 1727; children: Sarah, Jerusha, Esther, Mary, Lucy, Timothy, Susannah, Eunice, Jonathan, Elizabeth and Pierpont Edwards.
Puritan mystic, known for her piety and beauty, married Yale graduate and pastor Jonathan Edwards (1727); moved to Northampton parsonage with husband and participated in Northampton revivals (1738), experiencing ecstasies similar to those of St. Teresa of Avila and recording experiences in diary; followed husband to posting in Stockbridge (MA) parsonage and Indian mission, at edge of frontier; a practical pioneer woman, lived resourcefully and fearlessly while caring for 11 children; made home center of hospitality, welcoming guests and caring for soldiers quartered in barracks; had good relations with Native Americans of area as w
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The William and Mary Quarterly
Abstract:
The document presented here, “Mrs. Edwards’s Experiences in Jan. 19, &c. 1742,” is the earliest-known version in manuscript of a narrative by Sarah Pierpont Edwards that was later published in revised forms, first by her husband, Jonathan Edwards, in 1742, and again in 1829 by the Edwardses’ great-grandson, Sereno Edwards Dwight. An introduction examines the manuscript and considers the printed iterations of it, revealing the changes made to her previously written or dictated words. Sarah Pierpont Edwards’s “Experiences” offers new insights into both her personal piety and the controversies over embodied religious experience during the Great Awakening. The account not only reveals the previously obscured extent of her spiritual transports during a time of personal crisis but also suggests a new valorization of bodily religious experience during the mid-eighteenth century that threatened to undermine the hierarchy of gender and pointed to an alternative conception of selfhood.
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David F. Bacon, ed. Memoirs of Eminently Pious Women of Britain and America (Hartford, 1833), detail from plate containing five separate portraits opposite p. [300].
SARAH EDWARDS (1710 - 1758)
By all accounts, Sarah Edwards, daughter of James Pierpont, one of the principal founders of Yale, was a deeply pious woman. In 1728, she married the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, who initiated the revival in Northampton, Massachusetts, which grew into the First Great Awakening. Mrs. Edwards’s own religious life was marked by the extreme fervor of the Awakening, which became a major movement in American religious history.
A short biography, along with her portrait, is included in Memoirs of Eminently Pious Women (Hartford, 1833), which describes her intense, mystical worship:
“Near the close of the year 1738, according to the testimony of Mr. Edwards, she was led, under an uncommon discovery of God’s excellency, and in an high exercise of love to God, and of rest and joy in him, to make a new and most solemn dedication of herself to his service and glory, an
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