Elizabeth Coggeshall

Elizabeth (née Hosier) Coggeshall (March 4, 1770 — June 6, 1851) was a Quaker (Society of Friends) minister and missionary from Rhode Island who traveled and worked throughout the United States and overseas.

Elizabeth Hosier was born on the fourth or fourteenth of March 1770 in Newport, Rhode Island, the daughter of Giles and Elizabeth (née Martin) Hosier (also spelled Hossier). They raised her in the Quaker faith, and provided hospitality for Quakers who were traveling, a tradition that she followed when she had her own home. She had an "animated and sprightly" disposition, but she was somewhat serious.

Elizabeth Hosier married Caleb Coggeshall in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on October 3, 1793, becoming Elizabeth Coggeshall. Caleb, the son of Job Coggeshall, was born on August 28, 1758, in Nantucket. The Coggeshalls moved to New York in 1802.

Caleb died on January 1, 1847, in New York City. He was interred at Friends Grounds in Houston, New York. Coggeshall died on June 4 or June 20, 1851, in New York City.

With some hesitation, Coggeshall accepted a call to the ministry, speaking for the first time in March 1795. She became a minister the following year.

She decided in 1797 that she wanted to travel to the British Isles and the European Continent for ministerial work. She was apprehensive to take the trip, leaving a thirteen-month-old child at home, but she had the support of her husband and her parents to make the trip. She had found a fellow Quaker minister, Hannah Jenkins Barnard, to travel with her. She was advised to be independent of Barnard in her ministry.

Coggeshall and Barnard arrived in Falmouth, Cornwall in July 1798. They traveled to England, followed by Scotland and Wales, where they attended almost all of the Quaker meetings. After that, they traveled 1700 miles throughout Ireland and attended 150 meetings. Over time, Barnard had developed her own interpretation of Quaker beliefs.

The women attended the London Yearly Meeting in June 1800, where Coggeshall's companion (Barnard) was told that the members of the Meeting did not approve of the opinions she expressed when she was preaching and they would not authorize the women's trip to the European Continent. Leaving Barnard, another companion was found for Coggeshall who preached at meetings in the British Isles until March 9, 1801. She boarded the Alleghany on March 30, 1801, in Liverpool, which was bound for the United States.