From the Parish Church to the Peel Meeting — Fifty-Five Years a Minister in Birmingham
“Surely our Heavenly Father deals gently with the feeble of the flock.” — Mary Capper
Born on the 11th of the fourth month 1755, daughter of William and Rebecca Capper of Rugeley, Staffordshire, one of ten sons and four daughters brought up in the Episcopal Church; about her tenth year she was sent to an aunt at Macclesfield.
Set out from Birmingham on the 19th of October 1776 for Paris 'or some other part of France', her health 'upon the decline for some months'; on the way she attended a Friends' meeting in Gracechurch Street, London.
After her return from France 'an obvious change took place in my manners'; the ceremonies of the church affected her to tears and fainting. About the end of 1777 her brother Jasper joined the Society of Friends, and in 1778 married Anne Fry of Whitechapel.
About 1784 she went to live with a brother in London and became a regular attender of Friends' meetings; her father 'desired not my return to the parental roof' unless she was satisfied with the religion he had given her.
Admitted into membership by Peel monthly meeting about 1788; 'a few words arising in my mind with something of unusual power, I think at the Peel meeting, I stood up and spoke them'.
Removed to Birmingham in 1789 and was recommended to the meeting of ministers and elders in 1794, though 'I know not that I can claim the awful, important character of a gospel minister'.
With her friend Mary Beesley of Worcester she visited Friends of Bristol and Somersetshire in 1798, the meetings and families of Oxfordshire in 1800, and in 1803, Beesley now Mary Lewis, Hampshire, Somersetshire and Devonshire.
Removed to Leominster in 1811 and was recommended back to Birmingham in 1816, where she lived until her death.
Liberated in 1823 for service in and about London, visiting the families of Ratcliff meeting; in 1824 Elizabeth Fry took her to Plashet, where 'a room was allotted to me' and she joined the morning Scripture readings.
Visited the meetings and families of Friends in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and part of Leicestershire, 'her last engagement of this nature away from home'.
Wrote, 'now in the eightieth year of my age yet a sojourner and a pilgrim', a testimony to the marvellous love of God 'as the guide of youth, and the staff of lengthened years'; much of her account of her childhood was penned after eighty.
At meeting the First-day before her decease and speaking to the children, she died on the 23rd of the fifth month 1845, 'in the ninety-first year of her age, a minister about fifty-five years'. Some lists give 1835; that was the year her brothers John and James died, and the corpus is explicit on 1845.
Heard him exhort Friends to 'keep to the power in which our meetings were first established', walked with him from an interment at Whitechapel in 1800, and in 1839 thanked his relatives for his printed life, having been 'somewhat familiarly acquainted' with him in the early days of her attachment to Friends.
In 1824 Elizabeth Fry took her from Plaistow monthly meeting to Plashet, allotted her a room, and sometimes sat with her there, though 'almost every hour of her time is importantly occupied, in benevolent exertions for the poor and miserable'; Capper's brother Jasper had married Anne Fry of Whitechapel.
In 1796 she attended an evening meeting held at the request of 'William Savery, from America' and dined with him at Samuel Baker's, 'with whom I felt a sweet fellowship'; she later heard him report his visit to Germany and France.
Visited asylums for the blind and orphans with Mary Dudley and Samuel Dyer, dined with her in 1823 when she 'appears to be near the close of her labours', noted the quarterly meeting thinned by her death, and followed her journal's route through Bawtry in 1826.
Present at Birmingham in 1794 when Martha Routh laid her concern to visit America before the ministers and elders; Routh 'came to stay a few days' in 1808, and Capper heard her preach 'Jesus set forth as a Saviour and Redeemer' in 1815.
Sarah Stephenson sat the Birmingham meeting of ministers and elders with her in 1794, met her at Worcester, and Capper was at the yearly meeting when Stephenson 'in a weighty manner, opened her concern to visit America', where she died.
Her journals, letters and childhood recollections, entrusted by herself to Katharine Backhouse of Darlington and compiled in 1847, with the testimony of Warwickshire North monthly meeting, reprinted in the Friends' Library, volume 12 (1848), with additional letters to correspondents in America.