Elizabeth Rutt

Elizabeth Rutt (1756-1841) was received into the congregation at College Lane on 12 May 1771.  The Church Book notes: ‘Miss Eliz.h Rutt aged 14 1/2 declared her Experience and was received, -- having Leave from her Parents, and coming from London for that purpose’ (f. 139).  In John Ryland, Jr’s, narrative of Mrs. Trinder’s Society is embedded a separate account of Elizabeth Rutt’s ‘experience’, written almost exclusively in Greek letters and possibly in her hand, for it does not appear to be in Ryland’s hand. Her ‘experience’ was probably composed for acceptance into the Independent congregation she attended in London, since she did not join the Northampton congregation until May 1771. A Mary Gibbons Rutt, most likely Elizabeth’s sister, was received into the church on 2 June 1775.  Ryland jun adds in a note to the church book entry that Mary Rutt later married a Mr. Rivers of Cornhill, London (f. 191).  Elizabeth married the Rev. Mordecai Andrews jun (d. 1799), who ministered to the Independent congregation at Coggeshall, Essex, from 1775-97.  Their daughter, Eliza Julia Andrews (1792-1861), emigrated to America in 1817, and on her journey to Illinois met George Flower (1788-1862), Benjamin Flower’s nephew; they were married that same year and became one of the leading families in the English settlement at Albion, Illinois.  See Janet R. Walker and Richard W. Burkhardt, Eliza Julia Flower: Letters of an English Gentlewoman: Life on the Illinois-Indiana Frontier 1817-1861 (Muncie, IN: Ball State University, 1991); Timothy Whelan, "John Ryland and School: Two Societies in Northamnpton Boarding Schools, Baptist Quarterly 40 (2003), 90-116.