(1713–1755), Quaker preacher. Born in England and raised in the Anglican church, Elizabeth Ashbridge used to wish as a young child that she was a boy so that she could become a minister. Although barred from the ministry by most denominations, Ashbridge's ambitions were eventually fulfilled in her adulthood when she converted to Quakerism, in which women were granted the authority to preach. Her spiritual autobiography, Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge, published posthumously in 1774, documents Ashbridge's spiritual journey toward Quakerism and her struggle to claim her religious authority in a society where cultural prejudices against women and Quakers were strong.
From The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States in Oxford Reference.