Chronology
Chronology
(Some dates vary slightly according to the source.)
1669—In January, Susanna “Sukey” Annesley is born, last of twenty-five children of leading British dissenter Samuel Annesley.
1682—In August, Susanna at thirteen meets Sam Westley, a student preparing for the dissenting clergy. Susanna changes her religious affiliation from dissenting to Church of England.
1689—Susanna and Sam marry. Sam, too, has espoused the Church of England and has changed his name to Wesley. They set up housekeeping in a small apartment on the Thames. William Prince of Orange and Mary take the throne of England.
1690—In February, Sammy, Jr., is born. At the Battle of the Boyne, William cements his claim to the throne. Sam accepts a position at South Ormsby, a village deep in the wilds of Lincolnshire Wolds.
1691—Their second child, daughter Susanna, comes. The sickly baby dies.
1692—Emilia, their third baby, is born.
1694—Twins, Annesley and Jedediah, die. In December Queen Mary dies of smallpox at thirty-three. The Prince of Orange rules alone.
1695—Their sixth baby, Susanna, nicknamed Sukey, is born. Sammy speaks his first words at age five.
1696—Mary is born. Dubbed Molly, she is permanently maimed by a maid’s carelessness.
1697—Sam accepts a larger parish at Epworth, not far from South Ormbsy. There their eighth, Mehetabel, or Hetty, arrives. Over the next five years, five babies, including one set of twins, are born to die.
1701—Sam and Susanna’s political convictions regarding the legitimacy of the Prince of Orange come to loggerheads. Sam moves out.
1702—William dies, and Queen Anne accedes to the throne. This fails to end the stubborn political argument that nearly destroys Susanna’s marriage. Anne, their fourteenth child, is born and nicknamed Nancy. Susanna and Sam manage to patch their differences and come back together.
1703—John Benjamin Wesley, the fruit of the renewed union, is born and nicknamed Jackie, their fifteenth child.
1704—Sammy, Jr., goes off to school. Political opposition against the Tory Wesleys mounts in this Whig region.
1705—During a raucous political protest outside their house, a nurse accidentally smothers their sixteenth child. Sam is thrown into debtors’ prison in Lincoln. John Sharpe, Archbishop of York, comes to his aid at Susanna’s behest. Sam will travel to convocations in London for the next seven winters.
1707—Number seventeen, Martha nicknamed Patty, arrives in December. Charles, the eighteenth, is born prematurely and survives.
1709—In February, fire destroys the rectory; Jackie is plucked from a second-story window in a dramatic escape. Kezia (Kezzy), Susanna’s nineteenth and last, is born. The children are farmed out until the new brick rectory can be completed.
1711—Susanna begins a winter Sunday evening service in her home, and she must defend it before Sam in the face of complaints by the frightened and jealous curate. The service does much both to promote the gospel and to heal rifts between the locals and their rector. Sam returns to amity.
1714—Jackie goes off to prep school at age eleven. Emilia, twenty-three, goes to Gainsborough to teach.
1715—Sammy, Jr., marries well.
1716—Charles, less than eight, joins his brothers for school in London. Susanna at age forty-seven begins to suffer depressions.
1721—Sukey marries poorly to escape poverty.
1724—For the first time in thirty-five years Susanna returns to London to greet her returning brother. He never arrives, the victim of suspicious circumstance.
1726—Jackie becomes a fellow in Lincoln. During this general period, Hetty runs off with a smooth-talking lawyer who abandons her. She marries William Wright—a most sorry union. Patty goes to London and meets Westley Hall. Sam takes the responsibility for Wroote parish. The arrangement is unsatisfactory and unsuccessful, and Sam eventually moves the family back to Epworth.
1731—Sukey takes ill in November, probably of puerperal fever. Susanna goes to her and herself becomes ill with pleurisy. She begins to suffer overwhelming depression.
1732—An accident leaves Sam slightly disabled. He begins to fade. Westley Hall leaves Patty for Kezzy, returns to Patty and marries her, takes both her and Kezzy back to London.
1735—Sam Wesley dies at age seventy-two. John and Charles go to Georgia to serve as missionaries to the Indians. Susanna lives with Emilia at Gainsborough.
1736—Charles returns from Georgia disillusioned.
1737—John returns a fugitive. The brothers turn their efforts to evangelizing not the Indians but Mother England.
1738—John’s Aldersgate conversion shows him an inner witness to salvation, which his father had preached about for years. Charles had received the same several days earlier. Through his sons, the revival Sam, Sr., so long dreamed of finally floods England and the world.
1739—In August, at age seventy, Susanna experiences the same inner witness her husband had described and her sons had found. In November, Sammy, Jr., dies at age forty-nine.
1741—Kezia dies at thirty-two. Emilia’s absentee husband, Robert Harper, dies.
1742—At great peace with herself, Susanna goes to meet the Lord she served so faithfully.