Livermore, Harriet

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LIVERMORE, Harriet

Born 14 April 1788, Concord, New Hampshire; died 30 March 1868, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Daughter of Edward St. Loe and Mehitable Harris Livermore

Evangelist and religious author, Harriet Livermore was the third of five children and a descendant of Samuel Livermore, U.S.Senator from New Hampshire. Her father, an attorney, was a justice of the New Hampshire supreme court. Her mother died when she was five.

Livermore is noted for the zeal and fervor which marked her personality. Even as a child, she demonstrated fits of temper severe enough to concern her family. At eight, Livermore was sent to a girl's boarding school in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and later attended the Byfield Seminary and the Atkinson (New Hampshire) Academy. Her beauty and conversational abilities were highlighted during a visit to Washington, D.C., when she was twenty; socialites of the city were taken with her intelligence, vivacity, and wit. In 1811, she was engaged to Moses Elliott; his parents, however, forbade the liaison, feeling that a woman of such "excitable and stormy temperament" could not insure his happiness. Livermore herself noted this turning point: she "fled to the name and form of religion, as a present sanctuary from the sorrows of life." In her view, it would be chastisement for her "wild and irregular" disposition.

Livermore's works are entirely religious in nature, and most have seen little public success. They parallel her life in that each grew from her evangelical travels and her personal search for religious creed. Raised in the Episcopal church, she turned to Quakerism, then Congregationalism; later, she became a Baptist, but left formal religion to become the self-named "Pilgrim Stranger." But while her writings are impassioned, effusive, and sincere, they most often are directionless, marred by organizational deficiencies and Livermore's increasing personal eccentricity.

One of her more lucid efforts, A Narration of Religious Experience (1826), documents her turn to spirituality and evangelism with Livermore's own testimony that her escape was prompted by the "sorrows of life" and her unfortunate love affair. The Narration is essentially her autobiography to 1826; she realized that people thought her crazy but insisted on seeking religious truth by her own means. In 1824, she suffered a breakdown, and afterwards reevaluated for a final time her myriad denominational inclinations. The Narration epitomizes the religious attitudes guiding Livermore's writing. When she fell ill in 1824, a voice told her: "This is to punish you for your infidelity to your master."

Out of Livermore's conviction that Christ's return was imminent came her book, The Harp of Israel, to Meet the Loud Echo in the Wilds of America (1835). For this, she journeyed through hazardous territory to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to seek out the Native Americans, although local officials prevented her from spreading the gospel. The Harp is a work of subjective evangelism. It depicts Livermore's fervor in converting the Native Americans, identified in her text as the lost tribes of Israel, through inspirational prose and poetry.

A Testimony for the Times (1843) focuses on the conversion and "condition" of the Jewish people and state. While her tract is not wholly anti-Semitic, she indicates that Christ would rule on David's throne over the Israelite tribes, the Jews first having to suffer for their rejection of the gospel. Her Christ was due in 1847. By this time, the marked eccentricities of both woman and writer forced even formerly steadfast supporters to abandon her.

In "Snowbound" (1866), John Greenleaf Whittier described Livermore as "A woman tropical, intense / In thought and act, in soul and sense / She blended in a like degree / The vixen and the devotee." Although she eloquently spoke and ministered before Congress and her speaking abilities were said to be "glorious," Livermore's prose writings, adhering to the idiom of early-19th-century evangelical writing, are obscure and stylistically inaccessible to the general public. Livermore had hoped that she would be a role model, inspiring other women to greater participation in the church. But her ever-increasing solitude ironically removed her from those she would have reached; this and the impenetrability and extremism of her writings made her even more the "solitary traveler." Despite an inner strength and conviction, her work is, sadly, a curiosity and not of literary merit.

Other Works:

Scriptural Evidence in Favour of Female Testimony in Meetings for Christian Worship in Letters to a Friend (1824). An Epistle of Love, Addressed to the Youth and Children of Germantown, Pennsylvania, County of Philadelphia (1826). A Wreath from Jessamine Lawn; or, Free Grace, the Flower That Never Fades (1831). A Letter to John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation (1838). Millenial Tidings (1839). The Counsel of God, Immutable and Everlasting (1841). Glory of the Lord in the Land of the Living by Redemption of the Purchased Possession (1842). Addresses to the Dispersed of Judah (1849). Thoughts on Important Subjects (1864). The Sparrow (n.d.).

Bibliography:

Adams, M. Q., Memoirs, Vols. 10 and 12 (1876, 1877). Livermore, S. T., Harriet Livermore, the "Pilgrim Stranger" (1884). Thwing, W. E., The Livermore Family of America (1902).