Catherine Evans
ODNB (Article: 45822)
Born in Flintshire, Sarah Henry was the eldest daughter and third child of Philip Henry, nonconformist mister and Katherine Matthews (1629-1707). She was taught to read both English and Hebrew at a very young age, and began in childhood practising summarising sermons she had heard. She married, apparently reluctantly, John Savage, who she was distantly related to her and was a widower with one child. They lived in Wrenbury Wood, Cheshire and their home became known as a dissenter meeting place. Like her father, Sarah was a committed diary keeper, keeping diaries from 1686 to her death. These recorded her own use of time, examined her spiritual behaviour, and recorded her desire for a child and her worries about her possible infertility. However, after several miscarriages, Sarah would go on to have nine children, and four of them (all girls) would survive her and marry. Her husband died in 1729 after a 42 =-year marriage. Following his death, she moved to West Bromwhich, Staffordshire in 1736, where she died in 1752 and was buried in the churchyard. Only the first original volume of her diary survives, although transcripts remain elsewhere. In 1818 John Bickerton Williams, a nonconformist and relative, compiled a memoir of her life drawing on her diaries, as an example of "female virtue".