author
Eliza Paul Gurney
1801–1881
A Quaker minister and poet from Philadelphia, she devoted her life to peace, abolition, and reform. Her story also includes a remarkable connection to Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
1 Audiobook
Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life
by Eliza Paul Gurney
About the author
Born in Philadelphia in 1801, Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney was raised in a Quaker family and became known as a minister, poet, pacifist, and abolitionist. In the 1830s she began traveling in religious ministry, and after meeting the English Quaker leader Joseph John Gurney, she worked alongside him and later married him in 1841.
The couple shared strong commitments to antislavery work, peace, and prison reform, and they spoke and traveled widely in support of those causes. After her husband's death, she returned to the United States and continued her ministry, remaining an active public voice in Quaker and reform circles.
She is especially remembered for her 1862 visit with President Abraham Lincoln and for the correspondence that followed, which helped fix her place in Civil War history as well as religious history. Eliza Paul Gurney died in 1888.