To Sarah Ryan (November 8, 1757)

Sarah Ryan (1724–68), maiden name unknown, was spiritually awakened under Whitefield’s preaching at age seventeen. She married about age twenty, but was soon deserted by her husband. About eighteen months later she married a sailor named Ryan, who may have been abusive during his times home from the sea. Through the influence of the wife of the sailor’s captain, who was a Methodist, Ryan began attending JW’s Foundery in London. She participated in a class meeting and established a friendship with Sarah Crosby. In 1754 she experienced a strong spiritual renewal. Over the next year, partly in conversation with JW, she decided not to follow her husband to New England, where he had moved (see AM 2 [1779]: 296–310).

In 1757 JW appointed Ryan housekeeper at the Kingswood School in Bristol. Ryan’s letter of Aug. 10 accepting this position is the second surviving item in their correspondence. Ryan was one of JW’s most spiritually intimate correspondents, provoking the jealousy of his wife Mary when she intercepted a letter of JW to Ryan (see the letters of Jan. 20 and 27, 1758). By 1762 Ryan had left Bristol, and spent her final years working closely with Mary Bosanquet in ministering to orphans.