Susanna Wesley (Mrs. Ellison)
I have not been able to ascertain the year in which Susanna Wesley was born: but it was sometime between 1700 and 1702, as in the list of the ten children she stands before her brother John, who was born in 1703. Of her youth I find little. She is reported to have been good-natured, very facetious, and a little romantic, but behaved herself with the strictest moral correctness. She married Richard Ellison, Esq. a gentleman of good family, who farmed his own estate and had a very respectable establishment. But though she bore him several children, the marriage, like some others in the Wesley family, was not a happy one. She had a mind naturally strong and vivacious, and well refined by a good education: his was common, coarse, and uncultivated, morose, and too much inclined to despotic sway, which prevented conjugal happiness. Unfitness of minds, more than circumstances, is what in general mars the marriage union. Where minds are suited, means of happiness and contentment are ever within reach.
Susan was much beloved by her sister Hetty, (Mrs. Wright) and with her Mr. Ellison for a time was a high favourite.
What little domestic happiness there was, was not only interrupted, but finally destroyed, by a distressing accident. A fire took place in their dwelling-house, by which it and all their property were destroyed: the family alone escaped with their lives, and in consequence were all scattered among different relations. What the cause of this fire was I cannot learn: but from that time Mrs. Ellison would never more live with her husband! She went to London and hid herself among some of her children who were established there, and had considerable helps from her brother John, the common almoner of the family. Mr. Ellison used many means to get her to return: but she utterly refused either to see him, or to have any intercourse with him.
As he knew her affectionate disposition, in order to bring her down to Lincolnshire, he advertised an account of his death! When this met her ear, she immediately set off to Lincolnshire to pay the last tribute of respect to his remains: but when she found him alive, and well, she returned; and no persuasion could induce her to live with him.
It does not appear that she communicated to any person the cause of this aversion and dislike and at this lapse of time it is in vain to pursue it by conjecture, lie had several children, four of whom are traced and well remembered, — John. Ann, Deborah, and Richard Annesley Ellison.
1. John Ellison lived and died at Bristol. — He was an officer in the Excise, or Customs; and left two daughters by his first wife; — Elizabeth Ellison, who turned out unfortunate, and to whom 1 have known Mr. J. Wesley shew great kindness, often relieving her in distresses to which her imprudence had reduced her, treating her with great tenderness, and giving her advices, which, had she followed, would have led her to true happiness; — and Patience Ellison, who married in Bristol, was a member of a Dissenting congregation in that city, and conducted herself as a useful member of society, and a genuine Christian. He also left a son named John, by a second wife; — a respectable man in good circumstances; still, for ought I know, resident in Bristol.
2. Ann Ellison married Mr. Pierre Lievre, a French Protestant refugee. — He left one son, Peter Lievre, who was educated at Kin ^swood School; took orders in the Church of England; and lately died at his living of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire. He was accounted a worthy religious man, and has left a family in comfortable circumstances. His son is a clergyman of good character. — This Ann Ellison made a second marriage with a gentleman named Gaunt, who soon left her a widow. It was in the house of this Mrs. Gaunt, that her mother, formerly Susanna Wesley, died in London. The year of this second marriage I have not been able to ascertain.
S. Deborah Ellison married another French refugee, Mr. Pierre Collet, father to Mrs. Biam, and of the Collets yet alive. Both Eievre and Coll ft were silk-weavers.
4. Richard Aiwesley Ellison died at twenty-seven, leaving two orphan daughters, of whom Mrs. Voysey is one, an excelled warm-hearted Christian, and wife of a pious Dissenting minister. This excellent couple have four children; one a surgeon in the East Indies, another an architect, and two amiable daughters, one of whom is lately married, and settled respectably.
At present three of Susanna Wesley’s grand-children are alive: the above-mentioned Mrs. Voysey, Mrs. Biam, and Mr. Collet, brother of him who forged certain letters intended to traduce the character of Mr. John Wesley, a man to whom he was under the highest obligations. He is dead: but it is comfortable to be able to add, that all his forgeries were detected, and that he confessed and repented of those calumnies with which all the family were shocked, for they held them in abhorrence.
Mrs. Gaunt, (Ann Ellison, afterwards Lievre,) was a fine-looking stout woman, under the middle size, with an abundance of wit. She died in London, chiefly supported in her latter years by Mr. John Wesley and her son Lievre.
Susanna Wesley lived awhile with her uncle, Matthew Wesley, after which she appears to have been sometime in Lincoln as a teacher; and probably, on Emily’s removal to Gainsborough, assisted her in her new settlement. It was to Susanna that her Mother sent that beautiful Exposition of the Apostles’’ Creed, which the Readei will find entered under the Life of Mrs. Susanna Wesley, senr.
JOHN WESLEY, A. M.
Late Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxon.
John Wesley, the ever memorable Founder of the people called Methodists, whose name only is introduced here in the connected order of the family, was born at Epworth, in Lincolnshire, on the 17th June, 1703, and died in London, at his own house in the City Road, March 2, 1791, in the eighty-eighth year of his age, and the sixty-fifth of his ministry.
His Life has been written by the Rev. Dr. Coke, and the Rev. Henry Moore, 8vo.
By John Whitehead, M. D. 2 vols. Svo.
By the Rev. John Hampson, 3 vols. 12mo.
By Robert Southey, LL.D. Poet Laureat, 2 vols. Svo.
Whatever excellencies the above accounts may possess, a propei Life of Mr. John Wesley is still a desideratum in the religious world.