The experiences of Nancy Welch, a blind woman : .....Together with lines for a family of her acquaintance.... Written by herself

The Experiences of Nancy Welch is a versification of the conversion experience that so many eighteenth-century writers expressed in prose. Nancy Welch (1767-1807), as the song says, was presumably “born and bred, in Essex county, Marblehead.”

The song appears on a separate broadside, The Experience of Nancy Welch, with the text in four-line verses in common meter that would fit any common psalm tune. Here, however, the text is pushed together into one long verse, suggesting that it may not have been intended to be sung.

“Lines for a Family of Her Acquaintance” is a poem listing the ten living children in a family that was kind to Nancy, exhorting each to seek redemption in the Lord. Some are described with small hints of their individuality. Silas is off somewhere, perhaps at sea; Phineas is an “airy youth”; Hannah may be about thirteen, “young and in her prime”; and Jasper is a “lively stone.” There are some problems with gender toward the end when Louis is encouraged to repent of all “her” sins, but generally the text reads smoothly, simply, and without extravagant expressions. Like Nancy’s earlier song, the text is in common meter and would fit a standard psalm tune.