2. The Sanctificationists Started A New Trend In Women’s Liberation
About 10 years into listening to all of these desperate women talk about their individual stories about their unhappy marriages, Martha McWhirter started to have prophetic dreams from God. In the dreams, He told her that women did not have to endure this abuse, and that she needed to start a community where these ladies could escape and live independently from their husbands.
Martha’s husband George ran a general store on the bottom floor of their house. They moved to an apartment upstairs, and cleared out the rest of the spare rooms to let women live in the spare rooms whenever someone was running away from a particularly abusive and unsafe marriage.
These women were grateful for the help, and they didn’t expect to get free rent. Every time a woman stayed with the McWhirters, they offered to help run the general store and do their household chores in exchange for rent. These women also started to find jobs around town in order to get their own income so that they could pay for their own food, clothing, and other necessities. They started to do laundry, sell eggs and milk, and began clean houses in town to earn an income to pay for themselves and their children.
Since these women were all close friends who were in similar situations, they didn’t think twice about lending money to each other if one person came up short that month. After a while, these women began to feel more and more empowered. With each other’s support, they could actually pay their bills perfectly well without a husband. Eventually, there were too many women to fit in McWhirter’s house. All of these women pooled their incomes together to buy a boarding house. Each woman got their own bedroom, and they shared their kitchens, bathrooms, etc. Their money went into a treasury, and everyone benefited from the collective work of the group. This became known as the Belton Women’s Commonwealth.