Barbara Heck

Ruckle, Barbara (Heck) b. Bastian Ruckle (Sebastian), and Margaret Embury, daughter of Bastian Ruckle (Republic of Ireland) and married Paul Heck (1760) in Ireland. The couple had seven kids, and four survived childhood.

The subject of a biography has been an active participant in important instances or has presented unique concepts or ideas that are documented in document form. Barbara Heck however left no letters or statements indeed any evidence of such since the date of her marriage is merely secondary. There is no evidence of primary sources, from which one can reconstruct her motives and her actions over the span of her lifetime. However, she has become heroized in the beginning of North American Methodism history. It is the task for the biographers to define and delineate the mythology for this particular case and then to attempt to depict the actual person included within it.

Abel Stevens was a Methodist scholar who wrote his thesis in 1866. Barbara Heck is now unquestionably one of the pioneer women in the history of New World ecclesiastical women, due to the advances made by Methodism. It is much more vital to look at the extent of Barbara Heck's record in relation to the name she was bestowed than the story of her experiences. Barbara Heck was involved fortuitously at the time of the emergence of Methodism throughout The United States and Canada and her fame rests on the common tendency of an extremely successful organization or institution to glorify its origins to strengthen its sense of tradition and continuity with its past.