Lucy Barns

Lucy Barns (1780-1809) was born in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, a daughter of Thomas Barns, the pioneer Universalist preacher of Maine. Though confined in her last years by severe asthma, she wrote letters and verse defending the doctrine of universal salvation, and she died in 1809 at the age of twenty-nine. Her writings were gathered soon after her death as The Female Christian, considered one of the first books by a woman written in defense of Universalism, and they were reprinted in later collections of her letters and poems.

Lucy Barns, daughter of a pioneer Universalist preacher, wrote letters and verse defending the faith from her sickbed and died at twenty-nine in 1809; her little book The Female Christian was the first published defense of Universalism by an American woman. This memorial edition, issued nearly a century later, preserved her writings for a denomination that had come to see her as its protomartyr of female authorship.

(Note: this summary was automatically generated and may be inaccurate.)