"Mingling Souls Upon
Paper"
An Eighteenth-Century Love
Story
by Bonnie Hurd
Smith
November 3, 1774,
Gloucester,
Massachusetts
When John Murray entered
the Sargents' best parlor on that chilly November day, he looked
forward to greeting his host, Winthrop Sargent, and warming himself
by the fire as they discussed Universalist theology. As a tireless
and popular preacher of universal salvation since he had first sailed
for the British colonies in 1770, John expected his reception to
resemble dozens of earlier such encounters. But this meeting was
different, because here, in Gloucester, he met Mr. Sargent's
daughter.
Judith Sargent Stevens was twenty-three years old, lovely, intellectually curious, and devoted to her chosen faith, Universalism. John was a robust thirty-three, a man whose charismatic presence and outgoing personality dominated the room. But Judith was married. Any thought of a romance with John was out of the question. Instead, Judith hoped they could "surely, and with the strictest propriety, mingle souls upon paper" by writing to each other.
While few of John's personal letters are known to exist, approximately 5,000 of Judith's letters were hand-copied in twenty letter books discovered in the library of a former Mississippi plantation. Many of her letters are reprinted here for the first time. The letters in Mingling Souls Upon Paper are Judith's words. They trace her fourteen-year friendship with John, their controversial twenty-seven&endash;year marriage, and their lives together as husband and wife when John was the "choice of her heart" and she was his "ever devoted wife." They chronicle Judith's blossoming career as the most important female essayist in eighteenth-century America, and John's as the founder of organized American Universalism. Finally, they record John's debilitating illness and death, and Judith's final days without him. All together, the letters cover forty-four years of their personal and public lives.
Through Judith Sargent Murray's letters, Bonnie Hurd Smith, herself a distant cousin of Judith's, skillfully brings to life two extraordinary eighteenth-century individuals whose love story is timeless.
Published by the Judith Sargent Murray Society, a division of
Hurd Smith Communications.
ISBN-10: 0-9791214-0-X ISBN-13: 978-0-9791214-0-1 .
Manufactured by ABCO Printing. Soft cover; 218 pages; 8 pages of
illustrations; index.
Contents
Introduction
(with brief biographies of Judith Sargent Murray and John Murray)
Recipients of the Letters
The Letters
Resources
Index
8 Pages of Illustrations
Sample
Letter
Letter 627 to Mr
Murray
Written May 18, 1788, while John was in England. Earlier that year,
in January, John's Universalist supporters in Gloucester advised him
to leave town for his safety while they responded to a new challenge
to John's ministry. John left for England, not knowing if he would
ever be able to return. Before he left, John asked Judith to marry
him. After several long months of waiting for the Massachusetts
legislature to declare John's ministry legal, Judith was finally able
to write to him that it was safe to return. The legislature had ruled
in his favor.