In her early 20s Harriet Livermore suddenly gave up life as a socialite and became a wandering evangelist preacher. She traveled to the Holy Land five times, wrote books, and tried to establish a Jewish homeland – all before 1850.

MORE: Famous People  

Harriet Livermore Was Early Female Evangelist

Memorials are not always made of bronze. A few years ago, for example, the Sheraton Harborside asked me to select a few historical figures to receive a special tribute. Seven penthouse condominiums would be named in their honor and decorated in their memory. I finally toured the Port of Call Luxury Condominiums the other day and, take it from me, life at the top is pretty suite.

I took the assignment seriously, perhaps obsessively, pouring over the biographies of dozens of notables, then painstakingly whittled down the list like they do on American Idol. I wanted a diverse group of characters, all of whom had really spent time in Portsmouth. Celia Thaxter, who ran her own hotel on Appledore Island was an obvious choice.

Maverick filmmaker Louis de Rochemont was selected, and his rooms are decorated in posters from his own movies that I found on Ebay. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, peace treaty emissary Jutaro Komura, former mayor Mary Dondero and naval hero Isaac Hull all made the cut. Each has his or her name on the door and life story on display in a specially appointed apartment. It’s not the Smithsonian, but it’s a homey and heartfelt tribute.

Escaping "the sorrows of life"

I am most proud of bringing a little recognition to the least likely candidate. Few Portsmouth figures have experienced a more amazing life than Harriet Livermore (1788-1868), though her story is largely unknown. Born into one of New Hampshire’s powerful families, Livermore gave up wealth and status to become an itinerant preacher in an age when upper class women were seen, but seldom heard, in public. Casting aside fineries, she traveled the world more than many sea captains and lived a harsher life. Her mission was to rid the world of the encroaching evil in the "stinking age" in which she lived.

Born in Concord, this self-confessed "pilgrim stranger" began her days as a New Hampshire socialite. Her grandfather Samuel Livermore married Jane Browne, daughter of a prestigious Portsmouth minister during the peak of the city’s British rule. Yet he managed to adapt from a King’s Attorney to a trusted Congressman and Senator after the Revolution. Harriet’s father too served in the fledgling United States Congress, but his wife died when his daughter was just five. Harriet, who began speaking out boldly even as a child, was all but abandoned to nursemaids and private finishing schools.

Harriet Livermore almost led a normal life. She dressed in fine clothes, played cards, danced and read novels. While at nearby Atkinson Academy, she met the man of her dreams, but both families opposed the union. When he died years later in the War of 1812, Harriet resolved to bring her sorrow to the Lord. She wanted to become a preacher and leave the "vain, thoughtless" life of a socialite behind. Her three male cousins were clerics, but the calling was not considered proper work for a woman, even one as dynamic and brilliant as she.

Harriet tried one Protestant faith after another. Casting about for a doctrine she could believe in, she eventually embraced the apocalyptic Adventist vision. She began writing books, traded her aristocratic clothing for homespun, and separated from her wealthy family. In a gesture of religious transformation, she cut off three feet of dark silky tresses and thereafter appeared with close cropped hair. This severe look in an attractive educated woman confounded, and yet captivated, listeners as she preached of doomsday and atonement in homes, in schools, on docks and street corners – anywhere people would listen. Christ would return to Earth in 1847, Harriet predicted, and she was preparing the way and giving sinners the chance to repent.

CONTINUE LIVERMORE STORY

Outspoken but no feminist

Today Harriet is gaining recognition as a striking example of a small, but significant movement of women preachers in the early 19^th century. Traveling alone, often penniless, the self-described "wayfaring pilgrim stranger’ was eccentric even for her times. Women had the right to preach the gospel, she insisted, drawing evidence directly from the Old and New Testaments. Mary Magdalen, she argued, was really the first evangelist, since it was Mary who discovered the risen Christ, and first informed the disciples. Harriet Livermore went as far as to suggest that Jesus himself exhibited feminine characteristics.

But although she has been adopted by modern feminists, Harriet Livermore was, in fact, a poor advocate for women’s rights. She accepted male authority without question, unless men treated women poorly. A wife should be her husband’s assistant and "helpmate", Harriet preached, but never his slave. Women, should be allowed to "spread the Word", but only men should be ordained as ministers, she said. As a result, evangelicals found her message too radical and "biblical feminists" thought her message was too weak.

In January 1827 Livermore became the first woman in history to preach to the US Congress. A thousand spectators packed the hall, including President John Quincy Adams and members of both houses of Congress. Many in the audience wept, according to reports, as Livermore spoke at length from the lofty chair usually reserved for the Speaker of the House. She drew her fire and brimstone sermon from the biblical passage: "He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God." According to one member of the audience, Harriet’s speech "savored more of inspiration than anything I ever witnessed." Newspapers across the nation covered the story.

CONTINUE LIVERMORE STORY

Finding the lost tribe of Israel

Five times Harriet Livermore struggled her way across the planet to the Holy Land. IN Jerusalem she walked in paths, tradition says, that Jesus walked. Relying on the meager income from sales of her books or on the kindness of strangers, she grew passionate about the creation of a Jewish homeland. "I … declare war on behalf of the Commonwealth of Israel" she wrote in one of her books. When she ran out of money, sometimes selling silver spoons inherited from her New Hampshire family, she came home.

Livermore also became a strong advocate of Indian rights in a time when Native Americans were being confined to reservations or killed in war by the American government as the nation pushed westward. Her own suffering, the suffering of the Jews and the Indians all worked together in her mind. She came to believe the beleaguered Indians were the famed lost tribes of Israel. Her job, she decided, was to preach to Native Americans, convert them to Christianity, or possibly lead them back to their ancestral homeland in the Middle East. Heeding the call, Harriet traveled west against all odds and tried to gain access to Native reservations. But fearing her tendency to treat Indians with equality, she was ejected from Kansas by the Bureau of Indian Affairs during her missionary work there.

Finally, at the age of 80 -- having suffered unrelenting discrimination, abandoned by family and followers, misunderstood and impoverished -- she died in an alms house in Philadelphia. Harriet Livermore lived long enough to see her first doomsday prediction fail, but not long enough to see the free state of Israel for which she advocated tirelessly. She dreamed, she wrote, of a day when women would be "clothed in the sun, and walk on the moon."

But what little is left of her fame, hangs today on a few lines written about her by poet John Greenleaf Whittier. As a boy, Whittier and his Quaker family were trapped for two days in their Haverhill, Mass. home by a heavy snowstorm. Harriet Livermore, by coincidence, was with the family during the storm and Whittier recalled her in his enormously popular poem "Snow-Bound". She is the "not unfeared, half-welcome guest". The poet noted her legendary temper, her lustrous eyes and "unbent will's majestic pride". The portrait was not complimentary. When Livermore first read Whittier's description of her, legends says, she threw the book across the room.

FOR MORE INFO: "Harriet Livermore, the Pilgrim Stranger: Female Preaching and Biblical Feminism in Early-Nineteenth-Century America," by Catherine A. Brekus in Church History, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 389-404.

Copyright © 2008 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved. J. Dennis Robinson is the editor of the popular web site SeacoastNH.com and author of books about Strawbery Banke Museum and Wentworth by the Sea Hotel. He will be presenting a lecture on the founding of Strawbery Banke this evening at the Portsmouth Public Library. Admission is free. This article was written with research assistance by Maryellen Burke.