Summary
By all accounts, Anna Spafford was handsome-a tall, blue-eyed Norwegian immigrant to the Midwest who developed a commanding presence. In the "Bible-drenched" post-Civil War era, she married Horatio Spafford, a fast-talking lawyer and preacher, and, after losing their four young daughters in an Atlantic shipwreck, accompanied him and a small band of followers to Palestine in 1881 to await the Second Coming. They had no money-in fact, he got out of Chicago just as his many creditors were closing in-but they relied on the Lord, and Horatio's followers to provide.
In American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $26, 400 pages, illus.), Jane Fletcher Geniesse, a former reporter for the New York Times, tells the fascinating story of the Spaffords and their quixotic enterprise. In the process of describing the first permanent and longest-lasting American settlement in Jerusalem, she covers the history of the Middle East from mid-19th to mid-20th century and the region's colorful participants, from Gen. "Chinese" Gordon, who sat for hours admiring the city from the roof of the Big House, to Kaiser Wilhelm, who required the Jaffa Gate to be enlarged so that he could ride through on his horse without risking damage to the peak of his helmet.See the full content of this document
Extract
Biography [Derived Headline]
Horatio Spafford led the group to Jerusalem, but it was the much younger Anna who displaced him as the one who received messages straight from God and gave orders to the rest. And although it was Horatio who first decided that husbands should be separated from wives, a...
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