Ann Crowley

Ann Crowley was born on May 8th 1765 at Shillingford, Oxfordshire, the sixth of the eight daughters of William Crowley, a mealman and maltster, and his wife Catherine Stiles. Ann felt that her Quaker family helped her struggle with what she perceived to be spiritual weakness. She confesses in her journal to a desire to dress fashionably, which she refers to as 'adorning the frail body with apparel inconsistent with the simplicity of truth'. She also loved music but put this aside as a 'worldly pleasure'. She dated her religious awakening from the age of 16 and found it confirmed by the shock of her father’s sudden death the following year, 1783, from an apoplectic fit at the age of 66. 

Wallingford Meeting House near Shillingford, built in 1724

Ann lived with her mother and unmarried sisters ‘in great harmony and tender affection’ but the family was further broken up when three of her sisters married, two of them to brothers. The death of her older sister Mary Ashby in 1791 aged 28, after less than two years of marriage, also gave Ann’s mind a serious turn and she began to feel that she might be called to the ministry. A few months later two visiting travelling ministers, Deborah Darby and Rebecca Young from Coalbrookdale, asked Ann to accompany them on their journey and under their influence she first spoke in meeting. 

Ann gradually extended her ministry, accompanying more experienced ministers and visiting local meetings. Her first longer journey was to Wales in 1794 with Mary Stevens of Staines, and the American Friends George and Sarah Dillwyn. Ann kept a careful note of the number of miles they travelled and meetings they attended. In 1795 Ann’s mother died after a stroke and this made it necessary for the remaining sisters to move house. Ann, as the eldest at home, felt that she should organise this, but she had ministerial commitments. The worry made her ill, but she recovered when a house in Uxbridge and her next journey in the ministry were both decided on. 

Uxbridge Meeting House window

Three weeks after she returned to her new home Ann’s family was again shaken by the death of her sister Catherine Ashby aged 36, who left a husband, Thomas, and six children in need of care. The aunts took turns to stay with their bereaved brother-in-law and his family in Staines, near London, but Ann did not take much part in this arrangement. Instead, in 1797, she left home to accompany Phoebe Speakman of Pennsylvania on her travels in the ministry throughout England, Scotland and Wales. The journey covered 4000 miles and took nearly two years, leaving Ann ill and exhausted.

In the next few years Ann continued to travel extensively, but eventually her health broke down and she was forced to remain at home for three years. In 1810 Ann went with Priscilla Hannah Gurney, who she had travelled with before, to Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, but her health was still in a very feeble state and she was confined to home again on her return, although this gave her the opportunity to nurse her younger sister Rebecca in her last illness until she died in 1814. 

View of Hastings in 1814

After travelling in the ministry again in 1815 and 1816 Ann was taken ill once more and again spent some time at home. In 1818 both Ann and her youngest sister Martha became dangerously ill and as they slowy recovered their doctors recommended warm baths and sea air for both of them. They went together to Hastings for some months which seemed to have a good effect. 

On her return Ann was never strong enough to travel in the ministry away from home again, although she attended local meetings when she could and was faithful to what she called her ‘little testimony’. Her health was very bad and she suffered much pain. During the last few weeks of her life her breathing was affected and she found speech difficult, so it was felt as a relief to herself, her family and friends when, after extreme suffering, she died on April 10th 1826 aged 60.

The two themes of Ann Crowley's life were family and ministry, but it was clear to her and to those around her that her religious calling always came first and that this was 'in right ordering'.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2015 - G for Priscilla Hannah Gurney

Priscilla Hannah Gurney was born on 22 June 1757 in Norwich, the elder of the two daughters of Joseph Gurney, a merchant, and Christiana Barclay. Priscilla's father died when she was four, but when she was ten her mother married John Freame, her first cousin, and the family moved from Norfolk to Bush Hill, Enfield. A son was born but John Freame's poor health led him and his wife to leave their children with relatives and travel on the continent. In 1770 he died and the family moved again, this time to Bath, which Priscilla saw as a 'vortex of dissipation'. About two years later her mother married for a third time, to William Watson of Bath, a physician, scientist and non-Quaker. This was the second time that Priscilla's mother had married against the rules of the Society of Friends, marriage with first cousins and non-Quakers both being frowned upon. On both occasions she had escaped with a loving reprimand rather than disownment, but she was determined that her daughters should not offend in this way and kept a close eye on their suitors.

Company At Play from The Comforts of Bath by Rowlandson 1798

In 1775, when she was 18, Priscilla went on an extended visit to her Norfolk relations and while she was there refused a marriage proposal from a young Quaker. This visit also brought into focus the spiritual dilemmas she was facing. For several years afterwards she was torn between the influence of her Quaker relations and that of her worldly friends in Bath, one of whom was zealous in urging Priscilla to convert to the Church of England. Eventually Priscilla, wanting to please her friend, was baptized and attended church services but was still unsatisfied. Her Quaker relations talked and wrote to her and gave her Quaker books to read. She tried to blot out the inner voice she heard saying "I must be a Quaker" by going to balls, concerts and plays in Bath, but the mental anguish of her spiritual struggle made her ill.

Barclay's Apology title-page

At last Priscilla decided to read some Quaker books and found to her surprise that she agreed with everything in her ancestor Robert Barclay's Apology, a standard work of Quaker theology. She told her family that she was now a Quaker. Her mother asked Priscilla not to change her appearance and Priscilla tried to oblige but eventually felt compelled to dress and speak as a 'plain Friend'. She was still stuggling spiritually and felt more comfortable with other Quakers than with her family.

When Priscilla was 27 she turned down another proposal from a young Quaker to whom she had at first been attracted. He refused to accept her rejection, trying to hold her to an 'understanding' which she did not feel they had, and harassing her both personally and through his family and friends. This emotional pressure made her ill and she took to her bed where she was visited by several weighty Friends. Among them was Mary Davis of Minehead, who befriended Priscilla, introduced her to Richard Reynolds and his wife Rebecca and took her to visit them at their home in Coalbrookdale.

Dale House, Coalbrookdale

Mary and Priscilla planned to set up home together, and even after Mary's marriage to John Merryweather in 1788 they still pursued their intention. But Mary's death, after the birth of her second child in 1791, put paid to this and Priscilla made her home instead with the Reynolds, who she called her 'parental friends', at Dale House, Coalbrookdale. The close-knit Quaker circle of families at Coalbrookdale, enlivened by a constant stream of visitors, at last gave Priscilla a secure base in which she felt at home and to which she could contribute. She became a Quaker minister in 1792 and travelled both locally and as far afield as Scotland and the Scilly Isles.

Priscilla, described by a friend as 'small in person, beautiful in countenance, elegant in manner', was the ideal person for her young cousin Elizabeth Gurney (later Fry) to be sent to visit in 1798 when she too was going through a spiritual struggle. Priscilla acted as a calm and sympathetic influence and introduced Elizabeth to Deborah Darby, who prophesied her future service.

Mary Ann Schmmelpenninck

In 1804 Richard Reynolds, after the death of his wife, decided to leave Coalbrookdale for Bristol and Priscilla also moved away, back to Bath where her sister still lived. There she made a striking figure in her old-fashioned plain Quaker dress and black silk hood. Her friend Mary Ann Schimmelpenninck recalls, 'She had what is called a helmeted eyelid, and a beautiful and serenely arched eyebrow, which contributed to her devout and tranquil expression, beautifully formed nose indicated at once strength and acuteness of intelligence and great delicacy of taste'. For the rest of her life Priscilla, in increasingly delicate health, lived in Bath, sometimes travelling in the ministry, and cultivated her talent for friendship. She was 'constant, ardent and faithful in attachment, earnestly persevering in the endeavour to serve her friends'. Eventually confined to her house by an extreme susceptibility of the lungs, but still welcoming small groups of friends, she died in Bath on 17 November 1828 at the age of 71.

In spite of Priscilla's misgivings about publishing her spiritual autobiography Memoirs of the Life and Religious Experience of Priscilla Hannah Gurney edited by S. Allen was issued in 1834, only six years after her death. Much of its interest lies in what it tells us about the struggles of one brought up both among Friends and 'in the world'. Priscilla Hannah is referred to by both her names because there was a contemporary Priscilla Gurney who was also a minister.