Rebecca was born in Burlington County, N. J. , in 1772, the daughter of Paul and Rebecca (Hewlings) Crispin, and the fourth in descent from William Crispin, a captain in the British Navy, whose son Silas came to Philadelphia with William Penn in 1682. Though her father, who kept a ferry and tavern near Moorestown, was indulgent to her, Rebecca's early life was wretched and unpromising. The chief thing that she remembered from her childhood was that someone had taught her to pick out a few tunes on a dulcimer and that she had liked to sing and play for her father's guests. In later life her conscience reproached her also for her early acquaintance with cards and dancing.
Career
Adolescence brought with it a deep concern for her spiritual welfare, but her mean attire and lack of a bonnet made her ashamed to attend the nearby Baptist church. She ventured finally into a Quaker meeting, was received with kindness and sympathy, and so returned to the beliefs and practices of her ancestors. Soon after her conversion she married and went to Salem County to live. In 1803 or 1804 she began to speak in meeting. At Haddonfield, Camden County, she was accredited in April 1807 as a minister, and the next year she returned with her husband and children to Woodstown, Salem County, which was her home for the rest of her long life.
In the spring of 1813, with the consent of the Woodstown Meeting, she set out on the first of a series of journeys that made her one of the most widely known ministers of her sect. Traveling by boat or carriage, on horseback, or afoot, she visited meetings in Virginia (1813), Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana (1814), besides making other shorter visits to Delaware, eastern Pennsylvania, and various parts of New Jersey.
At the prompting of the Inner Light, she overcame her diffidence sufficiently, on her first journey, to seek out the President and admonish him about the war. At Montpelier, Mr. and Mrs. Madison received her and her companion with unaffected kindness and parted with them as friends, Mr. Madison accompanying her to her carriage and depositing in it a large basket of provisions.
Such fragments of her journals as survive testify to her compassion for the Negro slaves and to her appreciation of natural beauty, especially of the lofty heights of the Alleghanies and the broad expanse of the Potomac below Mount Vernon. Of her mystic experiences, however, she writes in the unimaginative, conventionalized language common to Quaker biographies.
For two years before her death she suffered from slight but recurring strokes of paralysis.
Achievements
Rebecca Hubbs has been listed as a noteworthy clergyman by Marquis Who's Who.
The source of Mrs. Hubbs's influence seems to have lain in simple goodness and sincerity, for she was so humble and unlettered that to the end of her days she had difficulty in managing even ordinary conversation.
