Sarah Prince Gill, a model of eighteenth-century evangelical piety, was a diarist, a letter writer, and a leader in the female religious circles of Boston. As was often the case, even among influential women of her day, she published nothing during her lifetime. Manuscripts of her personal diary and meditations remain, however, revealing daily events and her spiritual life; and ten of her devotional exercises were published with the funeral sermon preached at her death in 1771. Her letter-journal, addressed to Esther Edwards Burr, is not extant, but Burr's responses have survived and present a picture of the lively letters that must have occasioned them. Gill was considered a leader and exemplar in religious circles, exerting powerful influence among family and friends, in her church, through her correspondence, and in regular prayer-group meetings with other women.

Sarah Prince was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1728, the daughter of the Reverend...