Monday, September 30, 2013

Appeal of Thankful Babcock that She be Accepted into the Church, Despite Her Life of Sin


Old manuscript, approximately 12" x 7-1/4", in which Thankful Babcock made an appeal to be worthy of entering a church, despite her life of sin.

The page is a bit too large for my scanner, but all the text appears in the image above.

The reverse shows only her name.



Transcript

I desire to thank God that I was born in a Christian land where the glad tidings of the gospel have been continually sounding in my ears.  It pleased God to deprive me at an early age of my parents.  My Mother, sensible of the worth of my immortal soul, dedicated me to the Lord in baptism.  From my grandparents I received many good instructions but I disregarded them and went on pursuing the ways of sin and vanity until a little more than a year since God was pleased to call up my attention to the one thing needful.  I felt myself a great sinner and found that I had been continually violating God's holy law which commanded me to love the Lord with my whole heart, soul, mind and strength for I had lived without him in the world.  I tried many months to do something whereby I might recommend myself to God but was at last brought to see that I could do nothing to merit salvation and to accept of Jesus Christ for my only Saviour.  And I do now in the presence of God offer myself to this church and humbly beg of them to accept of me and pray for me that I may prove faithful to my divine master and become a humble follower of Jesus Christ.

Sadly, there's no date or place noted on the document, but I would imagine it dates from the late 18th or early 19th century.  

There are quite a few women named Thankful Babcock in that time frame, just in New England alone.  Many of these Thankfuls, however, had at least one parent who lived a long life.  Adding to the difficulty of identifying the author of the plea, Thankful's birth name may not have been Babcock.

I hope that Thankful received the validation she sought.  Perhaps she had to mend fences in order to marry a "pillar of the community"?

Thanks for stopping by!

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