Out of Sight

Wesley Sanford is a rebellious teen who first rejects religion, and then becomes enamored of Christian Universalism, causing a minor scandal in Methodist Otsego, New York. The Sunday school teacher, Horace Ryder, declares Wesley an “infidel,” complicating Wesley’s courtship of Horace’s daughter, Mercy. The Sanfords resettle in the Allegheny River Valley’s Vinetown.

Jane Lippitt Patterson (1829-1919) born in Otsego, New York and educated at Tufts, was an author and editor. She became interested in Christian Universalism at age 13, and often walked three miles to Sunday services. She married a Universalist minister, who preached on a circuit in Crawford in Erie Counties in the 1850s.