The Letters of Mary Penry: A Single Moravian Woman in Early America

In The Letters of Mary Penry, Scott Paul Gordon provides unprecedented access to the intimate world of a Moravian single sister. This vast collection of letters—compiled, transcribed, and annotated by Gordon—introduces readers to an unmarried woman who worked, worshiped, and wrote about her experience living in Moravian religious communities at the time of the American Revolution and early republic.

Penry, a Welsh immigrant and a convert to the Moravian faith, was well connected in both the...