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Author: Ralling, John

Biography:

RALLING, John (fl 1775-1803)

He was a London coachman turned evangelist who later went to America and carried on his work of preaching salvation. No records have been found regarding his birth, family, or death, but his publications, in conjunction with newspaper advertisements, contain some clues and track his movements. His first publication was The Poor Man's Spiritual Instructor, in a Letter from a Young Man to his Sister (London 1775), with a second edition in 1780 that includes the information that the author was a lady's coachman. By 1790 he was in Philadelphia, where he published his Miscellanies. In Aug. 1796 he published Miscellaneous Sketches in Newburyport MA, where he then bought a house, advertised a private school he would be opening (September), but then offered the house for sale at auction (November). He went back to Philadelphia where he recycled some of the materials from the 1775 volume for A Short Essay (1800).  In 1802 he can be found living in Maryland and attempting to sell 1000 acres of land in Virginia. In Philadelphia in 1803 he enlarged and expanded a poem from the Miscellanies as a third edition of The Time Piece (1803). The place and date of his death are unknown, but there are later Rallings originating in Philadelphia, so it is possible that he had a wife and children there. (Political Gazette, Newburyport, 18 Aug., 15 Sept., and 18 Nov. 1796; The Times; and District of Columbia Daily Advertiser 12 May 1802) 

 

Books written (3):

3rd edn. Philadelphia: printed by Jane Aitken, 1803