Sarah Smith Lay

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Sarah Smith Lay, wife of abolitionist Benjamin Lay, and Quaker, was born in Rochester, Kent County, England. She was known as a well respected woman in Quaker Friends groups. According to her husband, who himself had physical disabilities which limited his height, Sarah too was similar in stature. The couple were, generally, noted to be a fine fit with one another.

Sarah Smith married Benjamin Lay in 1718. Lay had gone to America to receive a document which cleared him for marriage. He had done this because his behavior in English Quaker meeting houses would have halted his acquiring of a document for marriage. The two had to apply together to be given permission to marry which was granted the same year of their wedding.^[1] Smith and her husband then moved to Barbados in the 1720s to operate a business there.

Benjamin Lay was notoriously disruptive. Sarah Smith, on the other hand, was described as "an intelligent and pious woman" and "an approved minister of the gospel" at Friends Meetings.^[2] While it is not known if this difference caused trouble in their personal relationship, fellow Quakers struggled to understand how Sarah could put up with the radical.