Mary Dagworthy Yard James

Mary Dagworthy Yard James was born Mary Dagworthy Yard in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1810. Her father was a Quaker and her mother a Baptist, but Mary entered Methodist life as a child and began teaching in a Methodist Episcopal Sunday school at thirteen. She married Henry Boehm James in 1834 and combined family responsibilities with teaching, charitable work, writing, and public religious leadership.

James became a trusted participant in the nineteenth-century Wesleyan Holiness movement. She worked alongside Phoebe Palmer, led holiness meetings at Ocean Grove and elsewhere, and contributed to Methodist and holiness periodicals, including the Guide to Holiness, the New York Christian Advocate, and the Ocean Grove Record. Her work placed her among the women who exercised substantial devotional and organizational influence within American Methodism even when formal church offices were largely closed to them.

Her son's 1886 biography dates All for Jesus to the opening of 1871. The text's union of redemption, consecration, and practical obedience reflects the religious work to which James had long devoted herself. She also wrote My Body, Soul and Spirit and published The Soul-Winner, a biographical account of Edmund J. Yard, in 1883. James died in New York City that year.