ABSTRACT
In 1754, when Dickinson was sixteen and possibly still serving her apprenticeship, war broke out once again in Europe and North America. This conflict came to be called the Seven Years War in Europe, but many on the North American mainland would remember it as the French and Indian War. In the 1740s the British had engaged in yet another conflict with France, the War of the Austrian Succession; King George's War was the North American chapter of that longer story. In August 1755 British forces gathered at the southern end of a lake the French called Lac du Saint Sacrament but the English called Lake George. Sitting beneath the pulpit from which Reverend Woodbridge preached, Rebecca joined her congregation's prayers for protection of friends and family at war and for England and its king. Two years after Dickinson delivered her spiritual testimony, political resolution was achieved in the world war that had marked so much of her young adulthood.
