EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH COLTMAN HEYRICK P/69

                                                                            Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Elizabeth Heyrick Coltman. She lived from 1769 - 1831. Elizabeth was born in Leicester, UK. Her parents were John Coltman and Elizabeth Cartwright. The family practised Methodism.

In 1787 Elizabeth married John Heyrick. After her husband's death, when she was only 28, she became a Quaker and soon took to social reform.

In the early 19th century, prominent leaders of the British abolitionist movement, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, believed that when the slave trade was abolished in 1807, slavery itself would gradually die out. However, this proved not to be the case as without legislation, planters refused to relinquish their enslaved property. Campaigners such as Elizabeth wanted complete and immediate abolition of slavery as an institution. A decade after the abolition of the trade, it became clear to the movement that slavery itself would not die out gradually.

 

As a strong supporter of complete emancipation, she decided to address the leaders of the abolitionist movement In 1823 or 1824, Elizabeth published a pamphlet entitled, "Immediate, not Gradual Abolition," criticising leading anti-slavery campaigners such as Wilberforce for their assumptions that the institution of slavery would gradually die out and for focusing too much on the slave trade.

Read Part Seventy HERE