Two Troubled Souls: An Eighteenth-Century Couple's Spiritual Journey in the Atlantic World

by Aaron Spencer Fogleman

Overview

Jean-Francois Reynier, a French Swiss Huguenot, and his wife, Maria Barbara Knoll, a Lutheran from the German territories, crossed the Atlantic several times and lived among Protestants, Jews, African slaves, and Native Americans from Suriname to New York and many places in between. While they preached to and doctored many Atlantic peoples in religious missions, revivals, and communal experiments, they encountered scandals, bouts of madness, and other turmoil, including within their own marriage. Aaron Spencer Fogleman's riveting narrative offers a lens through which to better understand how individuals engaged with the eighteenth-century Atlantic world and how men and women experienced many of its important aspects differently.
Reynier's and Knoll's lives illuminate an underside of empire where religious radicals fought against church authority and each other to find and spread the truth; where Atlantic peoples had spiritual, medical, and linguistic encounters that authorities could not always understand or control; and where wives disobeyed husbands to seek their own truth and opportunity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469608808
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	12/09/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Aaron Spencer Fogleman is professor of history at Northern Illinois University and author of Jesus is Female: Moravians and Radical Religion in Early America and Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Note on Calendars and Currency Exchange Rates xiii

Introduction Marriage, Mission, and Migrants in the Atlantic World 1

Part I A Young Man's Path into the Atlantic World 15

1 Alpine Origins 17

2 Pennsylvania: A Troubled Pietist in an Individualist Paradise 30

3 Georgia: Joining a Colony of Rebels 53

4 Giving Europe Another Chance 72

Part II Union in Europe 83

5 A Woman's Path into the Atlantic World 85

6 The Wedding 93

Part III To the Caribbean They Went 99

7 A Long Journey Together 101

8 Trouble in Suriname 119

9 Salvation and Success on St. Thomas 147

Part IV Life in North America 173

10 Crisis and Controversy in Pennsylvania 175

11 Onto the Transatlantic Stage 197

12 Separation, Empowerment, and Flight from Pennsylvania 214

13 A Separate Peace in Georgia 233

Conclusion Seekers at Rest in a World They Could Not Change 259

Appendix Genealogy of Jean-François Reynier of Vevey, 1712-1775 261

Notes 265

Bibliography 291

Index 305

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

In Aaron Fogleman's delightful book, the human dramas and the distinctive characters of the Reyniers come through with clarity and poignancy—to read the first few pages is to want to read the rest. Fogleman portrays them shrewdly, sharply, compellingly, and compassionately. His scholarship is capacious and even audacious in its sweep and in its depth. In the telling of the Reyniers' story, we learn much about the tumultuous and brutal Atlantic world.—Michael Zuckerman, author of Almost Chosen People: Oblique Biographies in the American Grain

The eighteenth-century Atlantic world comes into surprising new perspective as Aaron Fogleman follows an adventurous missionary couple in Europe, the American colonies, and the Caribbean. In his deft hands, Maria Knoll and Jean-Francois Reynier come to life, both in the extensive networks of religious conversion and in the intimate exchange of a sometimes uneasy marriage. Two Troubled Souls is a great read, absorbing from start to finish.—Natalie Zemon Davis, author of Women on the Margins

Editorial Reviews

An unusually revealing view of the transcontinental networks and radical thought and behavior in the tumultuous 18th-century Atlantic world. Recommended. All levels/libraries.—Choice

A compelling, deeply researched, and accessibly written microhistory of one couple's journeys throughout the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.—William and Mary Quarterly

Fogleman offers a lens through which to better understand how individuals engaged with the 18th century Atlantic World and how men and women experienced many of its important aspects differently.—NIU Today

A rich microhistorical narrative.—Journal of American History

A well-told story that invites curiosity and reflection.—Georgia Historical Quarterly

Exhaustively researched and beautifully written.—American Historical Review

Anyone with an interest in the history of missions, the Atlantic world, the Moravians, or early American religious experiments will enjoy this book....This is careful scholarship written accessibly and with a biographer's skill for story.—Lutheran Quarterly

An evocative and insightful microhistory that adds depth to our understanding of the integration of the Atlantic. . . . Recommended for anyone interested in early American and Caribbean history, and is essential reading for those who study interfaith and intercultural encounters in the early modern Atlantic world.—New West Indian Guide

From the Publisher