Elizabeth Ashbridge

The life of Elizabeth Ashbridge (1713-1755) was attended with uncommon sorrows and difficulties, but she later had great cause to say with David, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted.” When only fifteen years old, she ran off and married without her parents’ knowledge or consent, and it was “about this time,” she relates, that “my sorrows, which have continued for the greatest part of my life, began.” Left a “young and disconsolate widow” only five months after her marriage, disowned by her father, she left England for America, having bound herself as an indentured servant to a wicked and deceitful woman. Her trials and afflictions continued many years, but through them her heart was made soft and desperate, and when she at last turned to the Lord, she found Him a very present help in time of trouble.