Behind the Story: The Children of Susanna Wesley and the Legacy of Epworth
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The documented story of Susanna Wesley’s ten children who reached adulthood—John’s preaching, Charles’s hymns, Samuel’s teaching and the daughters’ learning, work, suffering and faith—and how a home classroom at Epworth helped shape a movement whose influence travelled around the world.
Susanna Wesley is often remembered as the mother of John and Charles Wesley. That description is true, but it can make the rest of her family disappear.
Nineteen children were born to Susanna and Samuel Wesley. Ten reached adulthood: three sons and seven daughters. Their lives did not follow one simple pattern. Some taught. Some wrote. Some served within the growing Methodist movement. Several endured disability, poverty, bereavement or deeply painful marriages. One daughter disappears from the surviving records before the end of her life.
The public influence of John and Charles was extraordinary. Yet the quieter lives of their brother and sisters also reveal what Susanna’s classroom produced—and what even the most careful upbringing could not control.
This is the documented history behind the SOAR devotional “The Mother Who Built a Classroom at Home.”
1. The School Inside the Wesley Home
Susanna and Samuel Wesley moved with their growing family to Epworth, England, in 1697. Samuel served as the local Church of England minister. The family lived in the rectory—the house provided for the minister and his family.
Susanna took personal responsibility for educating the children. Their formal lessons began at the age of five. On the first day, each child was expected to learn the alphabet. Reading then moved carefully into the opening chapters of Genesis and other parts of Scripture.
Her daughters were not excluded. At a time when girls’ education was often restricted, Susanna insisted that they should learn to read properly before being occupied with sewing. The children also studied writing, Christian belief, conduct and personal responsibility. Some received instruction in Greek and Latin.
Education was not only a group exercise. Susanna arranged regular personal time with individual children, giving attention to their learning, behaviour and faith. Charles, for example, had his regular time with her on Saturdays.
In 1732, the adult John Wesley asked his mother to describe the principles she had used in raising and educating the family. Her written answer, often known as Educating My Family, preserved rules that joined order with encouragement. She believed that obedience should be recognised and rewarded, wrongdoing should be dealt with consistently, and a child who honestly admitted a fault should be treated with mercy.
Her teaching also extended beyond her children. During Samuel’s absence in 1712, Sunday gatherings in the rectory grew until approximately two hundred neighbours were attending. The young John and Charles watched their mother teach Scripture despite opposition.
The kitchen was therefore more than a room where lessons were completed.
It became a model of disciplined learning, personal accountability, spiritual conversation and teaching that reached beyond the family.
2. The Ten Children Who Reached Adulthood
The surviving Wesley children were:
- Samuel Wesley Jr. (1690–1739) — minister, scholar and teacher.
- Emilia Wesley (1692–1771) — teacher and school founder.
- Susanna “Sukey” Wesley (1695–1764) — wife and mother of four whose marriage brought severe hardship.
- Mary “Molly” Wesley (1696–1734) — a woman who lived with a disability and was remembered for sensitivity toward suffering.
- Mehetabel “Hetty” Wesley (1697/98–1750) — gifted scholar and governess whose adult life was marked by loss.
- Anne “Nancy” Wesley (1701–date unknown) — governess, wife and mother whose later life is poorly documented.
- John Wesley (1703–1791) — travelling preacher, organiser, writer and leading founder of Methodism.
- Martha “Patty” Wesley (1706–1791) — a thoughtful woman who endured abandonment and later remained connected with the Methodist community.
- Charles Wesley (1707–1788) — minister, preacher and writer of more than six thousand hymns.
- Kezia “Kezzy” Wesley (1709–1741) — teacher’s assistant who remained unmarried and later accepted her brothers’ evangelical work.
Only three sons received the educational opportunities available to men at Oxford. The daughters had fewer legal, financial and professional choices. Even so, Susanna’s insistence that girls should learn gave several of them skills they later used as teachers or governesses.
3. Samuel Jr.: The Other Wesley Teacher
Samuel Wesley Jr., known in the family as Sammy, was the eldest surviving child. He earned a Master of Arts degree from Oxford and became an ordained Church of England minister.
His main work was education. He taught at Westminster School and later became headmaster of Blundell’s School in Devon. When the family struggled financially, he also helped pay for Charles’s schooling.
Samuel did not join John and Charles in developing Methodism. He strongly disagreed with aspects of John’s outdoor preaching. His story is a useful correction to any picture of the Wesley family as a household in which everyone thought alike.
Susanna trained her children to learn seriously, but she did not produce identical adults.
4. John Wesley: From the Kitchen Table to the Open Field
John Wesley carried several patterns from Epworth into his ministry: disciplined study, carefully organised spiritual life, personal accountability, concern for education and the belief that Christian teaching should reach ordinary people.
After his experience at Aldersgate in 1738, John became a tireless travelling preacher. He spoke in marketplaces, on village greens and near mines and factories. Epworth Old Rectory estimates that he preached approximately 40,000 sermons. The Methodist Church in Britain estimates that he travelled about 250,000 miles over fifty years.
Preaching was only part of his work. John organised converts into societies, classes and smaller groups where people prayed, studied, examined their conduct and supported one another. He appointed lay preachers—ordinary Christians who were not ordained ministers—and gave women meaningful roles in the movement.
Historians at Epworth connect this openness partly to the example John saw when Susanna taught large gatherings in the rectory kitchen.
John also established and supported educational work. His mother’s written methods influenced his thinking about children and schools, including the development of Kingswood School. He wrote, edited or shortened approximately 400 publications on subjects ranging from Scripture and theology to medicine, slavery and social concerns.
His societies cared for the poor, visited prisoners, encouraged education and formed communities of faith among people who often felt unwelcome in established churches.
The methodical home in Epworth did not create John’s later faith or calling by itself. But it supplied habits, language and examples that he carried into a ministry reaching far beyond the village where he was raised.
5. Charles Wesley: When Scripture Became Song
Charles began his lessons at the age of five in the rectory kitchen. Records describe him learning the alphabet and reading the opening verse of Genesis on his first day.
At Oxford, Charles helped begin the small religious society later nicknamed the Holy Club. Its members met regularly for Bible study and prayer, visited prisoners, helped people in poverty and approached Christian living with deliberate order. The mocking name “Methodists” grew from that organised approach.
After his conversion experience in 1738, Charles preached and helped lead the early Methodist societies. In Bristol, he encouraged practical service to poor, sick, imprisoned and dying people.
His longest-lasting public contribution came through words set to music. Charles wrote more than six thousand hymns. Among the best known are Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, And Can It Be and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.
His hymns gave Christians memorable language for biblical truth, conversion, grace, holiness, suffering and hope. They travelled where Charles could not and continued to be sung after his death.
Charles also carried his mother’s concern for education into his own family. He supported the learning and musical abilities of his sons and ensured that his daughter received a strong education.
The child taught to read Scripture at a kitchen table became a writer whose words helped generations sing Scripture-shaped faith.
6. The Seven Wesley Daughters
The daughters’ lives were not footnotes to the achievements of their brothers. Their stories show intelligence, work, courage, restricted opportunity and, in several cases, profound suffering.
Emilia: Teacher and School Founder
Emilia, called Emily, worked as a teacher in Lincoln during the 1720s. With financial help from an uncle, she later established her own school in Gainsborough. Marriage brought financial and personal difficulty, and her husband eventually appears to have abandoned her. She later lived near her mother at the Foundery in London and became a Methodist, although she did not agree with every part of her brothers’ work.
Her career shows one of the clearest direct results of Susanna’s classroom: a daughter who received an education became an educator herself.
Susanna “Sukey”: Motherhood Under Severe Pressure
Sukey married farmer Richard Ellison in 1719 without her family’s approval. Historical accounts describe Ellison as violent and affected by alcohol. Sukey remained for years while caring for their four children. After a fire destroyed their house, she took the children to London and did not return to live with him.
Her life should not be converted into an easy success story. It reveals the limited choices available to women and the courage required to protect a family under painful conditions.
Mary “Molly”: Compassion and a Short Marriage
Mary lived with a disability caused by an early injury. Family accounts associate her with unusual sensitivity toward other people’s suffering. She married John Whitelamb in 1733. In October 1734, she gave birth to a stillborn child and died three days later at the age of thirty-eight.
Her story is brief in the surviving record, but it reminds us that influence and worth are not measured by length of life or public recognition.
Mehetabel “Hetty”: A Gifted Scholar in a Painful Life
Hetty excelled in Susanna’s classroom. Accounts say that by the age of eight or nine she could read substantial portions of the New Testament in Greek. She later worked as a governess.
Her adult life included betrayal, a troubled marriage, the deaths of her children and long illness. By 1742, she had become part of her brothers’ Methodist movement despite her husband’s opposition.
Her learning did not protect her from grief, but the record preserves the intellectual ability Susanna had recognised and developed in a daughter.
Anne “Nancy”: A Teacher Whose Final Years Are Unknown
Anne also worked as a governess. She married John Lambert in 1725 and had a son the following year. The family later faced unemployment and problems connected with her husband’s drinking. Charles intervened and helped bring Lambert into the Methodist movement.
The last known record of Anne dates from 1746. No reliable death or burial record has been found. A responsible history must leave that part of her life unresolved.
Martha “Patty”: Endurance After Abandonment
Martha was remembered as a serious and thoughtful child. Her marriage to minister Westley Hall became deeply painful because of his repeated unfaithfulness and long absences. He eventually left her permanently.
Patty lived until 1791. She sometimes stayed within the Methodist community at the Foundery and was eventually buried in the same vault as John at City Road Chapel.
Kezia “Kezzy”: Teaching and an Independent Decision
Kezia, the youngest surviving child, experienced frequent illness. In 1727, she worked with Emilia as a teacher’s assistant in Lincoln. She chose not to marry, resisting pressure to accept a match she did not want.
She was initially uncertain about Charles’s conversion and the growing evangelical movement. Over time, she came to accept her brothers’ work. Kezia died in 1741, one year before her mother.
7. Education Did Not Remove Choice or Suffering
The Wesley family prevents a dangerous misunderstanding of faithful parenting.
Susanna’s careful teaching did not guarantee that every child would enjoy a peaceful marriage, stable finances, good health, public ministry or agreement with the rest of the family. Her children made their own decisions. They lived within unequal eighteenth-century laws and opportunities. They encountered people and circumstances she could not control.
John’s and Charles’s fame should not be used to suggest that a parent who follows the correct method will always produce famous or visibly successful children.
The better conclusion is more honest.
Susanna gave her children tools: literacy, disciplined habits, familiarity with Scripture, experience of personal conversation and an example of conviction. Each child carried, used, questioned or struggled with that inheritance in a different life.
8. How Epworth Echoed Through Methodism
Several practices associated with early Methodism resemble patterns the Wesley brothers knew at home:
- Regular Scripture and prayer: the rhythm of the rectory reappeared in Methodist societies and classes.
- Personal accountability: Susanna’s individual conversations with her children were echoed in small groups where members examined how they were living.
- Education for ordinary people: John promoted schools, reading and Christian learning beyond wealthy families.
- Teaching outside expected places: Susanna taught neighbours in her kitchen; her sons later preached in fields, marketplaces and near workplaces.
- Women’s capacity to learn and serve: Susanna educated daughters and defended her own teaching; women later held important roles in early Methodist life.
- Faith expressed through service: the Holy Club and Methodist societies visited prisoners, cared for people in poverty and supported education.
The connection should not be overstated. John and Charles were also shaped by Oxford, Moravian Christians, George Whitefield, other ministers, personal failures, conversion experiences and decades of work.
But Epworth gave them an early pattern: faith could be taught carefully, practised regularly, examined honestly and shared beyond the walls of a church building.
9. From One Household to a Worldwide Family
By the time John Wesley died in 1791, Methodist societies had spread across Britain and beyond. Later generations carried the movement into many countries, developed schools and missions, wrote new music, served communities and organised campaigns for social change.
The Methodist Church in Britain reports that approximately 75 million people worldwide now identify as Methodist. The movement has divided, reunited and taken many different forms, but the names of John and Charles remain central to its history.
John’s preaching, organisation and writing helped build the structure.
Charles’s hymns gave the movement a voice to sing.
Samuel Jr. carried the family’s learning into formal education.
The daughters taught, raised families, endured suffering, made difficult decisions and lived lives that deserve to be remembered without being forced into the shadow of their famous brothers.
Behind them stood a mother who believed that teaching a child to read, think, pray and answer honestly was work worthy of her strength.
10. A Concise Wesley Family Timeline
- 1669: Susanna Annesley is born in London.
- 1688: Susanna marries Samuel Wesley.
- 1690–1709: The ten children who reach adulthood are born.
- 1697: The family settles at Epworth.
- 1709: The rectory burns; the children are temporarily separated among other homes.
- 1712: Susanna’s Sunday teaching gatherings grow to approximately two hundred people.
- 1720s: Emilia and later Kezia work in education; other daughters serve as governesses.
- 1729: Charles and friends begin the Oxford group that becomes known as the Holy Club.
- 1732: Susanna writes an account of her educational methods for John.
- 1738: Charles and John experience decisive spiritual change and begin the work associated with the Methodist revival.
- 1739 onward: outdoor preaching and Methodist societies spread.
- 1742: Susanna dies while living near John’s London ministry.
- 1748: John assumes responsibility for Kingswood School.
- 1788: Charles dies after a lifetime of preaching and hymn writing.
- 1791: John and his sister Martha die; the Methodist movement continues beyond its first generation.
11. Connection to the SOAR Devotional
The companion devotional “The Mother Who Built a Classroom at Home” places Susanna Wesley’s teaching beside the faith passed from Lois and Eunice to Timothy.
The fuller Wesley family history adds necessary depth. Influence is real, but it is not control. Seeds planted faithfully may produce public ministry, quiet service, questions, resilience or fruit that cannot be measured during a parent’s lifetime.
Susanna did not determine every outcome in her children’s lives.
She gave them a foundation.
That foundation helped shape teachers, writers, preachers, singers and ordinary people who carried learning and faith into very different circumstances.
The lesson given quietly at home may travel farther than the person teaching it will ever see.
Read the SOAR devotional: The Mother Who Built a Classroom at Home
Sources and Further Reading
- Epworth Old Rectory: Susanna Wesley.
- Epworth Old Rectory: Children of Samuel and Susanna Wesley.
- Epworth Old Rectory: John Wesley.
- Epworth Old Rectory: Charles Wesley.
- Epworth Old Rectory: Methodism and Its Epworth Roots.
- The Methodist Church in Britain: Susanna Wesley Day.
- The Methodist Church in Britain: History and Heritage.
- The Methodist Church in Britain: Our Heritage of Social Action.
