Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/549

510 was born. When but a young girl of eighteen, she joined the Methodist "Society" which had been established by John Wesley on one of his religious tours some years before. Barbara Rukle was early recognized among her associates as a woman of deep religious thought, a good counsellor, and her greatest treasure was her old German Bible, which she clung to all through her long eventful life. In 1760 she married Paul Heck and they emigrated to the new world and settled in New York. At the house of Philip Embury, a cousin of Barbara, she gathered a few religious people and begged that Philip Embury should preach to them, and this was the germ of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. Embury proved to be a very devout man and earnest preacher. As the congregation increased Barbara Heck began to entertain the idea of building a church. Captain Webb, a military officer, was one of Wesley's local preachers and had aroused the people by his zeal. Barbara succeeded in interesting him in her project and in 1770 the site for a church on John Street was purchased and the subscription started, Captain Webb subscribing thirty pounds. This list bears the names of the Livingstons, Duanes, Delancys, Leights, Stuyvesants, Lispenards, and the clergy of the day, Auchmuty, Ogilvie, and Englis, and this is supposed to be the first church of the Methodist denomination in America. Embury worked with his own hands on the building and Barbara Heck helped to whitewash the walls. Within a year there were a thousand members in this congregation. During the Revolutionary War, the Heck family emigrated to lower Canada, where they lived near Montreal, finally removing to Augusta, upper Canada, where Barbara Heck died at the age of seventy. She was found sitting in her chair dead with her much-loved Bible in her lap.

One of the women who took her part in the missionary field was Mrs. Ann Eliot, the wife of Rev. John Eliot who was surnamed "the apostle." His work was among the Indian tribes of New England in the early days of the colonies. Mrs. Eliot not only was an able assistant to her husband in his religious work but she worked as a humanitarian among these savage people. Her skill and experience as a doctor brought her great reputation among these people. She dispensed large charity and salutary medicines. To her is ascribed no small share of her husband's success.

Another woman who deserves mention in the missionary work among the Indians during the colonial period was Jemima Bingham, the niece of Eleazar Wheelock, D.D., an eminent missionary among the Indians. In 1769 she married the Rev. Samuel Kirkland who had taken up the missionary work among the Oneida Indians in that section of country where Rome, New York, is now situated. She taught the women and children and by her example and patient work brought about a changed condition among these people. In 1787 the Ohio Company was organized in Boston and built a stockade fort at Marietta, Ohio, called Campus