Eliza Bennis

Eliza Bennis (1725 – June, 1802) was a British Methodist leader. She was born in Ireland and died in Philadelphia.

Bennis was born in Limerick in 1802 to Isaac and Alice Patten. Her father died when she was eighteen and when she was twenty she married Mitchell Bennis who was a master saddler.

In 1749 she heard Robert Swindells preach in Limerick and she realised that this might be the answer to the spiritual hole she had inside herself. Swindells had arrived in Ireland with Wesley the previous year. This was not a complete and immediate answer to her doubts but she became the first Methodist convert in Limerick. Bennis became a leading person in Limerick looking after the Methodist classes and band meetings and she became the church's leader. Women were allowed to preach in the early Methodist church but Bennis asked the church leaders to send a preacher to Limerick. This was said to be the first time that the Methodists responded to such a demand.

In 1768 she was focusing her attention on Waterford where she established a Methodist group. She was in correspondence with Wesley who acknowledged her success. In 1770 he asked her to return to Limerick where the group had become disorganised.

In 1779 her husband was involved in the creation of the Limerick corps of Irish Volunteers.

Her husband died in 1788 at the end of a happy marriage which resulted in four children.

Bennis died in 1802 in Philadelphia.

After she died her son published her letters in 1809.

In the Smithsonian Institution there is an embroidery by Eliza Bennis.

In 2014 it was announced that the Asbury Theological Seminary had acquired documentation relating to Bennis.