Read Part One HERE
In this post I will focus on a woman named Zilpha Elaw. She lived from 1790 - 1873.
Zilpha was born to free black parents in Pennsylvania. One of twenty-two children, she was raised in a strong Christian home until age twelve, when her mother unexpectedly passed away and young Zilpha was sent to live with Pierson and Rebecca Mitchell, a Quaker couple who became her adoptive parents. Amidst this instability, she embraced the Methodist tradition and became a member of the church as a teenager.
At twenty, Zilpha married Joseph Elaw, who worked as a fuller in Burlington, New Jersey. The couple's only daughter, Rebecca, was born a few years before Zilpha suffered the loss of Hannah, her older sister.It was Hanna's deathbed premonition of her sister preaching that encouragd Zilpha to preach her first sermon at a camp meeting in 1819. She hid this calling from Joseph for a time.
Things changed in 1823 when Joseph succumber to illness, leaving behind an eleven- year old Rebecca and her mother, who felt the call to preach again. Transitioning out of her role as stay-at-home mother, Zilpha threw herself into service. For nearly two decades, she worked as a domestic servant to provide for her daughter, opened a school for black children with Quaker support in Burlington, and travelled extensively as an itinerant preacher. Zilpha's circuit carried her as far north as Maine and as far south as Virginia, allowing her to adress slave owners and the enslaved, white and black, women and men alike. Her memoir recounts what is was like to be a woman of colour travelling alone across the country, narrowly escaping threats of violence, imprisonment, and enslavement.
P.S. I will contimue to share the story of Zilpha Elaw in my next post.
Read Part Eighteen HERE
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