Relation of Catharine Broaders, [July 23,] 17861

    God in his Rich mercy has been pleas’d to reveal to me the Principals of the christian Religion, and my lost and undone estate by nature, and the way to Salvation by Jesus Christ. I praise God who has spared me to this time, and that I have this opportunity to give up my self to him. I praise the most high for his gracious calls, and invitations to come, and for the Strivings of the holy Spirit with my Soul, for the awaknings of his Providences especially in the death of my Husband,—which I received as a Loud call to be ready also,—I thank God that I have not been left to Perish under an impenetrable Hardness of heart, and [Scaredness?] of Concience.

    I profess to believe the scriptures to be the word of God, and take them for the rule of my life, and to believe in God as reveal’d in the Scriptures.

    I desire to repose my self entirey in Jesus Christ, relying on his infinite merits for my Justifycation and Salvation, and would humbly wait on him in his holy ordinances. I humbly ask admission into church communion here, and your Prayers for me that I may be a worthy Communicant

    Catharine Broaders

    1 Kate Fessenden m. Jacob Broaders, Sept. 16, 1779 (Vital Records of Westborough, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849 (Worcester, MA: Franklin P. Rice, 1903), 150); their first child, Jacob, was b. Feb. 1, 1780 (ibid., 29). Jacob Broaders died sometime in 1785, as the probate court issued a warrant for an inventory of his estate on Dec. 7, 1785. Katharine Broaders joined the church on July 23, 1786, presumably after making her confession; and the children of Jacob and Katherine Broaders were baptized on Sept. 10, 1786; Westborough Church Records, 254, 257, https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/4084 and https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/4087. Digital image of the relation: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:z316s983p (images 43–44). The filing notation reads: “The Relation of Cathrine Broaders.”