Esther Edwards Burr’s diary

Diary-keeping as a spiritual discipline especially developed among the Puritans, and we possess a good number of these texts that help to open up the inner world of their authors.

A good example is the diary left by the third daughter of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, Esther Edwards Burr (1732–1758), as she is known now.

Converted at 15

Samuel Hopkins remembered Esther as possessing ‘a lively, sprightly imagination, a quick and penetrating thought’. She was converted when she was ‘about 15’.