ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses Ann Curtis Clay Bolton and Elizabeth Sampson Sullivan Ashbridge, two British-American women of the first half of the eighteenth century, whose lives were deeply embedded in the Atlantic World. There are remarkable parallels between the two women's circumstances and experiences. Both crossed the Atlantic at least twice. Both spent most of their lives in the diverse middle colonies of British America, during a time of tremendous immigration from Europe and Africa. Both wrote autobiographies that offer rare and fascinating insights into how an ecumenical strain in popular religion, and Anglicanism in particular, played out in individual lives: while Bolton converted from Quakerism to Anglicanism, Ashbridge converted from Anglicanism to Quakerism. Their experiences show how much easier it was for people in the Atlantic World to alter their beliefs and even to dabble in other faiths by attending services, than it was for them to change their identities by the formal act of conversion.