of the mid-19th century, they were totally absent from positions of power in the Methodist Church. The obvious question is: How did the official Methodist Church react to this unprecedented drive by women to establish a church? Were these women not self-willed, upstart, renegade trespassers? Why weren’t they told to go home, care for their children, and prepare dinner for their husbands? Joyce used all of her research and investigative skills to coax answers from the church. Each effort was apparently ignored. Two potential explanations come to mind: 1. The archives contain no records about the founders, or the church’s first minister, Reverend William Lawton; or 2. Records do exist but shine an unflattering light on the Methodist Church and will not be circulated. Although stymied, Joyce’s meticulous research, at the very least, makes visible those who were relegated to invisibility. We are now, in writer Hilary Mantel’s words, “where the satisfactions of the official story break down.” The traditional genealogical records have been exhausted, and they do not contain the raw materials of the human interactions that shape a captivating and satisfying story. Official Methodism refuses to disclose whether it possesses those materials, and it seems that no earthly power can make it relent. Nothing would please Joyce more than to see other researchers unearth new factual discoveries about the founding mothers. However, if this is, in Hilary Mantel’s words, “the point where the satisfactions of the official story break down,” Joyce would be delighted to see an imaginative writer, having the highest regard for the indisputable historical facts, tell the enriched story of how these eight resolute women, generations ahead of their time, achieved their formidable goal. Adam Lutynski Boston, Massachusetts October 2022
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