Sarah Prince Gill

Portrait of Sarah Prince Gill by John Singleton Copley, 1764.

Sarah Prince Gill (July 16, 1728 – August 5, 1771) was an American Christian prayer group leader and writer.

Life

Sarah Prince was the 4th of five children born to Deborah Denny and Thomas Prince.[1] Thomas was the minister at Boston's Old South Church and a part of the Great Awakening.[1][2]

Sarah Prince was educated at home.[3] Thomas was particularly devoted to his children's education, "it was no small part of his labor and happiness to impress on his children a suitable sense of religion; and properly to form their sentiments, manners and taste."[3] Sarah Prince was widely read and likely educated to read Latin.[3]

Sarah Prince began journaling intermittently in 1734, but her most consistent period of writing lasted from the mid-1750s to 1764.[1] It is believed that she partially revised her journals towards the end of her life in order to polish her writing.[4]

Through her father, Sarah Prince was introduced to Esther Edwards Burr, daughter of Jonathan Edwards and future mother of Aaron Burr.[1] Sarah and Esther corresponded throughout the 1750s.[5] Perhaps inspired by Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, the two young women exchanged journals with the goal of helping their self-improvement.[6] They hid their correspondence from many of their acquaintances.[6] According to historian Philip J. Greven, the two women were "as close, if not closer than, sisters."[5] As Esther wrote to Sarah in 1754, "I esteem you one of the best, and in some respects nearer than any Sister I have."[5]

Esther Edwards Burr died on April 7, 1758. Sarah Prince was nearly inconsolable. “My whole dependance for Comfort in this World [is] gone,” Sarah wrote in her personal book of meditations. Esther “was dear to me as the Apple of my Eye- she knew and felt all my griefs..."[7]

Sarah Prince also corresponded with Catharine Macaulay.[8]

Although multiple men tried to court her, Sarah Prince remained singled and living with her parents throughout her twenties.[5] By 1752, Sarah was the only surviving child in the family.[5]

After the death of her father, 31 year old Sarah Prince married Moses Gill, a wealthy Boston merchant.[1] She was six years his senior.[9]

Sarah Prince Gill died at the age of 43 on August 5, 1771.[1] She had no children.[1]

Legacy

Esther Edwards Burr's letters to Sarah Prince are the most extensive surviving literary criticism written by a colonial American woman.[10] The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, 1754-1757 were published in 1984 by Yale University Press.[11]

In 2005, Prince's conversion narrative was published by the University of Tennessee Press as part of The Silent and Soft Communion: The Spiritual Narratives of Sarah Pierpont Edwards and Sarah Prince Gill, edited by Sue Lane McCulley and Dorothy Zayatz Baker.[4]

References

1. Yeager, Jonathan M. (2013-09-19). Early Evangelicalism: A Reader. OUP USA. ISBN 9780199916979.
2. Winiarski, Douglas L. (2017-02-09). Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England. UNC Press Books. ISBN 9781469628271.
3. History, International Conference on Women's (2012-10-09). Current Issues in Women's History. Routledge. ISBN 9780415623865.
4. McCulley, Sue Lane; Baker, Dorothy Zayatz (2005). The Silent and Soft Communion: The Spiritual Narratives of Sarah Pierpont Edwards and Sarah Prince Gill. Univ. of Tennessee Press. ISBN 9781572334373.
5. Greven, Philip J. Jr (2013-09-04). The Protestant Temperament. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 9780307831347.
6. Rubin, Joan Shelley; Casper, Scott E.; Boyer, Paul S. (2013-03-14). The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History. OUP USA. ISBN 9780199764358.
7. Norton, Mary Beth (2011-05-16). Separated by Their Sex: Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801461378.
8. Letzring, Monica (1976). "Sarah Prince Gill and the John Adams-Catharine Macaulay Correspondence". Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 88: 107–111. JSTOR 25080796.
9. "Portrait of Sarah Prince Gill – Objects - RISD MUSEUM". risdmuseum.org. Retrieved 2018-06-06.
10. Hayes, Kevin J. (1996). A Colonial Woman's Bookshelf. Univ. of Tennessee Press. ISBN 9780870499371.
11. "Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, 1754-1757 | Yale University Press". yalebooks.yale.edu. Retrieved 2018-06-06.