Sarah Parsons Moorhead

Sarah Parsons Moorhead (died December 1774) was an American poet, artist, and polemicist active during the Great Awakening in the 18th century. Her poems critique the itinerant ministers of the Great Awakening and demonstrate the emergence of women's voices during that time.

Biography Moorhead was married to the Rev. John Moorhead of Boston. John Moorhead was pastor of the Scotch Presbyterian Church in Boston. Together they had at least one child, a daughter called Mary, to whom Phillis Wheatley's poem An Elegy to Miss Mary Moorhead is addressed. Sarah Parsons Moorhead's surviving poems reveal that she was living in writing in Boston during the 1740s. Her utilisation of the heroic couplet and her ability to critique contemporary religious events suggest she had a substantial religious and literary education. She condemns itinerant ministers who travelled to revitalise local congregations.

Writing Moorhead's poetic writing is representative of the style of the time. She utilises florid language, recognising that this would make her arguments more palatable to readers. The publication of women's works in 1740s New England was an uncommon occurrence, and Moorhead's published works served a purpose above simple literary enrichment. It suggests that women's critiques on religion and current affairs were respected at the time. A postscript to the poem also scolds controversial itinerant clergyman Andrew Croswell for his criticisms of the settled clergy.

Moorhead depicts Puritans' difficulty of distinguishing between moral action and faith. She condemns churchgoers who remain "immers'd in the black Gulph of sin, / ... Pleas'd with the fancy'd Freedom of their Will." She may have provided art instruction to Scipio Moorhead, an enslaved African-American painter owned by the Moorheads who may have created the only known image of poet Phyllis Wheatley.

Works

Lines ... Humbly Dedicated to the Rev. Gilbert Tennant (1741) To the Reverend James Davenport on His Departure from Boston by Way of a Dream: With a Line to the Scoffers at Religion Who Makes an Ill Improvement of His Naming Out Our Worthy Ministers (1742)