In 1775, assuming the good climate at England could help him to improve his poor health, James and his wife sailed for England with Martha and Polly. In the following ten years, Martha stayed with her Uncle and Aunt in Europe. When Martha resided in England, she formed an acquaintance with many persons eminent for their piety, and particularly with the Countess of Huntingdon, by whom she was very much noticed. She highly prized the company of such persons, and from them received both pleasure and improvement. During her visit in Europe, her father was taken a prisoner, and confined on a charge of high treason in the Tower of London in 1780, and his life staked on the success of the American Revolution. Moreover, the disorder of her uncle became daily worse, and required unceasing attention by night and by day. Meanwhile, Charles Town was taken by the British and her beloved brother John Laurens had fallen in battle in a small skirmish in 1782. She suffered so much that she missed her hometown very much. Hearing the news that South Carolina restored its peace in 1783, Martha returned to Charleston with her aunt and sister in 1785. After leading an unsettled life for ten years, they found that it was the time that they should return their home. Two years later, on the 23d of January, 1787, Miss Laurens was married to Dr. David Ramsay.
During her visit in Europe, she read various books written by European Enlightenment thinkers, from which she was illuminated a lot. She read John Locke’s Essays on the Human Understanding, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Rights of Women, Newton’s Prophecies, as well as Scottish Enlightenment thinker Drs. Witherspoon and Smith’s books.
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