Mary Dagworthy James

JAMES, Mary Dagworthy (née Yard). b. Trenton, New Jersey, 10 August 1810; d. New York City, 4 October 1883. Her father was a Quaker and her mother a Baptist, but she was converted at a Methodist revival meeting as a child, and began teaching Sunday school in the Methodist Episcopal church when she was thirteen years old. She married Henry B. James in 1834. They moved to Mount Holly, New Jersey, returning to Trenton in 1853, where she helped to found a home for distressed and orphaned children. Mary became a prominent figure in the Wesleyan Holiness movement, assisting Phoebe Palmer (daughter of Dorothea Wade Worrall, and mother of the hymn composer Phoebe Palmer Knapp*). She often led...