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Letters from Susanna and Phillis Wheatley to Samson Occom
12019-07-16T11:00:46+00:00Emma Sternberg9dd1d1d0edcde572d5819158147f717e072da3b911Chiles Page 3plain2019-07-16T11:00:46+00:00Emma Sternberg9dd1d1d0edcde572d5819158147f717e072da3b9The March 29, 1773, letter from Susanna Wheatley to Samson Occom was one of many they exchanged, as Susanna was part of a network of evangelical patrons who supported Occom’s ministerial work. This is in addition to the several letters Phillis and Occom exchanged themselves—one, in 1765, no longer extant, that the letter signed by John Wheatley to Archibald Bell mentions, itself published just before the “Attestation” in Poems as proof of how Phillis’s “own curiosity led her to [writing]” and, apparently, that Phillis inscribed herself;9 and another, in 1774, in which Wheatley famously denounced slavery and that was printed in more than ten colonial newspapers.10 This 1773 letter from Susanna to Occom falls between those two letters from Wheatley, and, at first, seems to have nothing to do with her. Susanna opens by assuring Occom she has received two of his letters and details how she’ll ask a Dr. Downes to carry her letter and to forward it to Occom. She relates that Mr. Wheatley remains largely bedridden from a falling accident and that she herself is “very weak and low.” She requests Occom’s prayers for herself, John Wheatley, and especially Nathaniel—for whom, she conjectures, after her death, Occom will be “the only praying friend he will have left.” Unlike these several others living in the Wheatley household, Phillis Wheatley is referred to only indirectly in Susanna’s letter.
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12019-07-16T11:33:37+00:00Emma Sternberg9dd1d1d0edcde572d5819158147f717e072da3b9Commentary: Essay and PodcastJoelle Thomas12Katy L. Chiles Commentaryplain2021-03-11T22:50:50+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141