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began preaching at 42. Her brief tale chronicles a successful career as a preacher who frequently toured the northern states and travelled as far west as Michigan and back again to Pennsylvania when she was 87. She lived at least 10 more years. Both Jarena Lee and Zilpha Elaw were born to free par-ents on the mid-Atlantic seaboard. Both were drawn fairly early to the Methodist Church and felt the commission to preach years before embarking upon their first missions at the age of 30. Two themes dominate the stories of all three women. First, each empha-sized the work of the Spirit in her heart. Their exceptionally strong connection with the supernatural first exhibited itself in personal experiences of conversion and sanctification. Elaw experienced conversion while milking a cow: I turned my head, and saw a tall figure approaching, who came and stood by me. He had long hair, which parted in the front and came down on his shoulders; he wore a long white robe down to the feet; and as he stood with open arms and smiled upon me, he disappeared. She originally thought that the vision might only have been in her mind, except that the cow ‘bowed her knees and cowered down upon the ground’.
DOI link for began preaching at 42. Her brief tale chronicles a successful career as a preacher who frequently toured the northern states and travelled as far west as Michigan and back again to Pennsylvania when she was 87. She lived at least 10 more years. Both Jarena Lee and Zilpha Elaw were born to free par-ents on the mid-Atlantic seaboard. Both were drawn fairly early to the Methodist Church and felt the commission to preach years before embarking upon their first missions at the age of 30. Two themes dominate the stories of all three women. First, each empha-sized the work of the Spirit in her heart. Their exceptionally strong connection with the supernatural first exhibited itself in personal experiences of conversion and sanctification. Elaw experienced conversion while milking a cow: I turned my head, and saw a tall figure approaching, who came and stood by me. He had long hair, which parted in the front and came down on his shoulders; he wore a long white robe down to the feet; and as he stood with open arms and smiled upon me, he disappeared. She originally thought that the vision might only have been in her mind, except that the cow ‘bowed her knees and cowered down upon the ground’.
began preaching at 42. Her brief tale chronicles a successful career as a preacher who frequently toured the northern states and travelled as far west as Michigan and back again to Pennsylvania when she was 87. She lived at least 10 more years. Both Jarena Lee and Zilpha Elaw were born to free par-ents on the mid-Atlantic seaboard. Both were drawn fairly early to the Methodist Church and felt the commission to preach years before embarking upon their first missions at the age of 30. Two themes dominate the stories of all three women. First, each empha-sized the work of the Spirit in her heart. Their exceptionally strong connection with the supernatural first exhibited itself in personal experiences of conversion and sanctification. Elaw experienced conversion while milking a cow: I turned my head, and saw a tall figure approaching, who came and stood by me. He had long hair, which parted in the front and came down on his shoulders; he wore a long white robe down to the feet; and as he stood with open arms and smiled upon me, he disappeared. She originally thought that the vision might only have been in her mind, except that the cow ‘bowed her knees and cowered down upon the ground’.
ABSTRACT
None of these women challenged traditional feminine roles. Elaw wrote rather heatedly about woman’s proper place:
The boastful speeches too often vented by young females against either the paternal yoke or the government of a husband, is both indecent and impious – conveying a wanton disrespect to the regulation of Scripture . . . That woman is dependant on and subject to man, is the dictate of nature; that the man is not created for the woman, but the woman for the man, is that of Scripture.41