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259 conclusion Seekers at Rest in a World They Could Not Change During their spiritual journey of over thirty-five years, the Reyniers struggled to know and accept one another, find truth and opportunity, survive, and at times change the Atlantic World. It was a long journey filled with hope, fear, danger, grief, success, disappointment, mistrust, and a final separate peace between them. What do these two lives show us about the Atlantic World, so much of which they explored? As two Europeans coming from different places and backgrounds, they show us how those who journeyed into the eighteenth-century Atlantic World with grand plans to change it (or no plans at all) could be changed themselves. Their lives also show how connected the underside of the Atlantic system could be. They lived and worked in worlds of broken boundaries, religious radicals and outcasts, unwelcome missionaries, recalcitrant and resisting slaves, disobedient wives, and still little-understood encounters and cultural exchanges among Europeans , Africans, and Native Americans, all of which cut across imperial or colonial interests and, at times, the ocean itself. Clearly, there was an Atlantic system whose structures shaped lives and resisted unwanted change, but just as clearly there were those who assaulted it (however futilely), got lost in it, or just lived in or beyond it in ways that those with the most power could not always understand or control. The Reyniers’ story shows how husbands and wives could come into that world by different paths and experience its opportunities similarly and differently . They left their homes in Europe in different ways for different reasons, yet were thrown together by an enterprising religious group with grand Atlantic plans. The drama of their married lives unfolded as they attempted to carry out those plans and alternatively resisted and accepted both the Atlantic system and each other. During their journey, they sometimes found truth and opportunity separately and sometimes found it together, but their successes were often ephemeral, like the foam on the real and metaphorical waves they rode throughout the Atlantic World. 260 Conclusion As with nearly all historical figures, Jean-François Reynier and Maria Barbara Knoll deserve our study, understanding, and compassion, he as he sought truth and opportunity in strange new lands, and she as she took a leap of faith with a man she hardly knew and continually sought communal families in her human need for companionship. As in most long marriages, as they aged, their relationship became one of relative equals. After a life of danger, adversity, and marital tension, they acquired a secure place in a slave society they had once tried to change. One hopes they experienced the moments of peace and joy about which people seldom write autobiographies. ...

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