Woman on the American Frontier: A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"Fowler, William Worthington
History
Woman on the American Frontier: A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"
Fowler, William Worthington
Frontier and pioneer life -- United States; Women -- United States -- Biography
It was a sore trial for her parents to part with their beloved daughter;
but her character was so stable, and her convictions of duty so unswerving,
that at the end of three months and after much prayer, they consented
tearfully that Elizabeth should join "the Lord's people in the new world."
Arrangements were accordingly made for her departure, and all that wealth
could provide or thoughtful affection devise, was prepared, both for the
long voyage across that stormy sea and against the hardships and trials in
the forest home which was to be hers. In the spring of 1700 she set sail,
accompanied by a poor widow of good sense and discretion, who had been
chosen to act as her friend and housekeeper, and two trustworthy
men-servants, members of the Society of Friends.
Among the many extraordinary manifestations of strong faith and religious
zeal connected with the early settlement of this country, few are more
remarkable than this enterprise of Elizabeth Estaugh. Tenderly reared in a
delightful home in a great city, where she had been surrounded with
pleasing associations from infancy, and where as a lovely young lady she
was the idol of the circle of society in which she moved, she was still
willing and desirous at the call of religious duty, to separate herself
from home, friends, and the pleasures of civilization, and depart to a
distant clime and a wild country. Hardly less remarkable and admirable was
the self-sacrificing spirit of her parents in giving up their child in
obedience to the promptings of her own conscience. We can imagine the
parting on the deck of the vessel which was spreading its sails to bear
this sweet missionary away from her native land and the beloved of her old
home. Angelic love beams and sorrow darkles from the serene countenances of
the father, and mother, and daughter, and yet no tear is shed on either
side. The vessel drops down the harbor, and the family stand on the wharf
straining their eyes to catch the last look from the departing maiden, who
leans on the bulwark and answers the silent and sorrowful faces with a
heavenly smile of love and pity. Even during the long and tedious voyage
Elizabeth never wept. Her sense of duty controlled every other emotion of
her soul, and she maintained her martyr-like cheerfulness and serenity to
the end.
That part of New Jersey where the Haddon tract lay was at that period an
almost unbroken wilderness. Scarcely more than twenty years had then
elapsed since the twenty or thirty cabins had been built which formed the
germ-settlement out of which grew the city of Brotherly Love, and nine
miles of dense forest and a broad river separated the maiden and her
household from the people in the hamlet across the Delaware.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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