Because of a lack of records, basic things about Emily are not known. Could she read and write? Did she have any schooling at all? What were her skills? Were they exclusively care-giving? Or did she have a variety of skills that made her almost invaluable in a household? The roots of the Methodist women’s group who founded Greenwood Methodist Church lay in my estimation with the working relationship forged by Emily and Elizabeth, two quite different Methodist women. Emily was a working woman from the county who had nearly a lifetime of caregiving experience in families with disabled members. Elizabeth was a well-off woman from far away who managed a household with young children as a wife and widow. Emily’s mother’s story was one Elizabeth understood from her own experience. Emily’s mother after her second husband died was left with 11 children, six from his first marriage, four from her own first marriage and one they had together, two males and nine females. The males were Emily’s brother and her deceased stepfather’s son. The females were Emily, her two sisters, her deceased stepfather’s five daughters and the baby. The story probably was one of privation and adversity. If they were not working already, the older children probably went to work. Or they helped raise the younger children or both. By the end of the 1830s, nearly all had scattered leaving only Emily’s mother, her disabled sister, her half-sister and one of her stepfather’s daughters. 17 In day-to-day conversations about running a household, Emily and Elizabeth learned about each other and what they had in common. Their conversations probably began with challenges faced by their disabled family members and challenges other family members faced in caring for them. They probably continued with a range of topics, widows, widows with young children and young mothers. When Eliza, Emily’s sister-in-law, and Louisa Jane, Elizabeth’s new neighbor, joined in the conversations, they added something they had in common, the topic of girls growing up without mothers. This informal group in my estimation was frustrated in the 1840s when they probably gained little attention from the Methodist Church no matter what they said or did. No diaries or journals have been found but one imagines
17 1840 U.S. census, Abbeville District, South Carolina, p. 15 (penned), E. [Elizabeth] Redman [Redmond]; digital image, Ancestry.com (access through participating libraries : 28 June 2017); citing NARA microfilm publication M704, roll 507.
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