[Page 3: The History of Quakerism]
Here are the Adobe Acrobat documents that have been prepared so far, out of the Kouroo Contexture, that deal with subjects in the history of Quakerism.
The document on Brown University provides the early history of the institution, while it was a Baptist institution known as Rhode Island College, and later.
The document on Friend John Kellam will tell you about the life of one of your neighbors in town, who worked until he retired as a City Planner for the city of Providence.
The documents on World War II, filed on the "Give War a Chance" (!) page, will tell you of the general context of his experiences during that war, during which he
insisted upon the Quaker Peace Testimony and got stuck into a federal maximum security penitentiary (just in case WWII happens to be ancient history for you :-)
The document on manumission from slavery contains descriptions of the various papers that are on file under the eaves of the Providence town hall
-mingled in among the ancient real estate records- by which various local black slaves have been "set free."
The document on Friend Moses Brown will tell you about the life of the founder of that local school (he was really one grand guy, plus, imagine this, he had a wart on the end of his nose
the size and color of a small cherry that didn't slow him down even one little bit), and about what has happened at that school subsequently.
-Did you know that it was at the Moses Brown School that *Astroturf* was first tested?
The document on piracy contains many fascinating facts about the years during which Rhode Island excelled in privateering, and at piracy (they didn't term us "Rogue Island"
and "the sewer of New England" for exactly nothing).
The document labeled "REAL ROMANCE" is a heartwarming true story about a cross-eyed man, and the beautiful woman who loved him.
In regard to the document "KIDNAPPED QUAKER GIRL": What would you do as a parent if Indians came to kidnap your little auburn-haired daughter?
As a Quaker, a believer in the Peace Testimony, you can't just shoot at them. --But then, what happens? Under such extreme circumstances does our Peace Testimony fail?
The file on the impact of religion on Rhode Island contains information not just as to the history of Quakerism, but also as to the history of the Baptists here, and the Catholics.
The document about the life of Samuel Slater contains some information about the beginning of the Industrial Revolution here in America.
The document about Saylesville and Smithfield offers information about Quaker meetings in the surrounding environs of Providence, Rhode Island.
The document on the international slave trade, the "middle passage," documents the many years during which a significant percentage of Africans on the Middle Passage voyages
were being brought over in our Rhode Island bottoms:
 The beginnings of Quakerism in England and America 
Quakerism continues into its 2d century
Quakerism continues into the first years of its 3d century
Quakerism continues during the remainder of its 3d century
Quakerism continues into its 4d century
Quakerism continues into this new century
Quakerism has a long history, some of it dangerous and all of it fascinating.
The Quaker Peace Testimony
Contrary to what you might have been imagining, the Quaker Peace Testimony did not spring righteously all at once out of somebody's pious head. It is, by way of radical contrast,
something practical that has had a long history of development and permutation, and testing by experience. (And still some will tell you "Hey, give war a chance!")
 The City of Brotherly Love (not prepared yet)
Penn’s Woods (not prepared yet)
Smithfield and Saylesville Friends
The Quaker meetings at Saylesville and Smithfield in the environs of Providence, Rhode Island, were in existence well before there was a Quaker meetinghouse inside the city limits.
The oldest Friends meetinghouse in continuous use in New England
Information about the Quaker meetinghouse at Lincoln in the environs of Providence, Rhode Island. It's like we worshiped old stuff, or something. (No, we don't.)
The Great Meetinghouse of the Friends in Newport, Rhode Island
Information about the Quaker silent "Great Meetinghouse" and jiving black dancehall at Newport, Rhode Island.
Samuel B. Comstock, a Quaker Failure
Not very many birthright Quakers have attempted to set themselves up as a chieftain on a tropical atoll in the Pacific, with their every creaturely need catered to.
Not very many birthright Quakers have chopped sleeping people in the head with an ax. In fact, I think I can count them on one finger.
The father of this woebegone young man originated just to the north of Providence, Rhode Island at the Smithfield monthly meeting.
Although he gave his son the benefit of a guarded Quaker education at our school at Nine Partners, the school at which Friend James Mott and Friend Lucretia Coffin taught
— well, the lad blew it. The birthright Friend blew it bigtime. He spoiled the lives of others, not to mention spoiling his own life and disgracing everyone around him.
(You've probably never heard of this young Quaker, until now. Quakers in general have a good rep, as perhaps you've noticed. However
—if we can muster sufficient courage— we can perhaps learn something by examining our failures, as well as from forever congratulating ourselves as to our successes.)
The Influence of Religion on Rhode Island
Information not just as to the history of Quakerism in Rhode Island, but also as to the history of the Baptists here, and the Catholics.
The Quaker phrase "Speak Truth to Power"
We've figured out where this came from! —You can't imagine where it turns out to have come from!
The great Quaker politician
Were you aware that there was a famous Quaker politician, before Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon? Were you aware that this famous Quaker politician was the poet John Greenleaf Whittier,
and that he was the most influential person in Massachusetts? Were you aware he had a sister? Say you didn't know!
Major General Nathanael Greene was a Quaker and had a limp.
According to historian David McCullough on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Major General Nathanael Greene of the American Revolution "was a Quaker and had a limp"?
—Hey, this sounds like the sort of American pseudohistory they teach the kiddies over at the Moses Brown School!
The practice of Quaker disownment
A young Rhode Island Quaker, Jemima Wilkinson, believed that her spirit had been taken to Heaven during an illness in 1776, so that when she woke again to the world
she had come back not as herself but as a manifestation of "Divine Spirit" sent by God to warn the unfaithful. She answered to the name "Publick Universal Friend"
and rode around on a white saddle with blue velvet facings, dressed in men's clothing, preaching in Rhode Island,
Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Her Quaker meeting of course promptly disowned her (at least in part because one of her sisters bore a fatherless child,
and because some of her brothers had forsaken the Peace Testimony and joined the revolutionary army of George Washington).
After having stones thrown at her, she and her faithful band retreated to a pioneer colony "Jerusalem" in upstate New York. Soon after Universal Friend's death in 1819,
her community disintegrated. In this record, her life is considered in comparison with other cross-dressers of the period, in the context of Quaker practices of disownment,
in comparison with other notable members of the Wilkinson family both in New England and in Old England,
in the context of the religious enthusiasm being created in that period by the Reverend George Whitefield, and in the context of the initial white settlements
in the wilderness of the Finger Lakes district.
This detailed record of a Quaker disownment process provides a step-by-step demonstration of the process.
The disownment of Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon LaRouche is of course a piece of work. But did you know that he started out as a Quaker? (If you won't tell, I won't tell.)
The disownment of Friend John Wilbur and his "Wilburites"
What is it like, to be a Quaker and to find oneself disowned? When and why does this happen?
The 19th-Century journal of Friend Stephen Gould of Newport, Rhode Island
What sort of private journalizing and introspection and soul-searching did the Quakers engage in during the 19th Century,
when they were back home after hours of worship together at their meetinghouse on First Day? Find out.
The Great Splitting between the Hicksite Quakers and the Orthodox Quakers
As we know, a great mysterious split occurred among American Friends early in the 19th Century. The followers of Friend Elias Hicks got aholt of a clerk’s table by one pair of legs,
and the opponents of Friend Elias Hicks got aholt of that clerk’s table by the other pair of legs, and the unity of that table was no more.
Henry David Thoreau, in his jottings, made various invidious remarks against Quakers, but also, we discover, he worshiped with Quakers. If you check out the circumstances of this,
you discover that all of Henry’s negative remarks are in regard to the Orthodox Friends, and you discover that Henry worshiped with the Hicksites.
Evaluating Henry’s reaction informs us of what this great mysterious split had been all about.
The Quakers had just freed themselves from involvement in human enslavement, a blot on our national history, by manumitting their black slaves,
and these people who had used to worship with their masters had set up their own churches such as the AME church. Some of the newly purified whitebread Friends,
such as Friend Moses Brown, then went off on a tangent of Quietism that amounted to racial apartheid: race was an ongoing problem in America,
admittedly, but for them from then on it was going to be a "not our problem" problem. "Don’t bother us, we’re worshiping God here."
These were the Orthodox. After the Civil War, a whole lot of white Americans imitated them and the result was Jim Crow segregation, another blot on our national history.
Meanwhile, however, other of the newly purified Friends, such as Friend Lucretia Coffin Mott, had been going off on a different tangent,
one of concern and of interracial involvement, that amounted to integrationism or to what was then known as "amalgamation." These were the Hicksites.
For these Hicksites, the answer to the question "Am I my brother’s keeper?" was simply "It is what it is."
The two groups of Quakers, going in very opposite directions in regard to America’s number one problem,
greatly got on each others nerves, and it seems to have been this that tore the Religious Society of Friends into two pieces.
Thoreau chose the Hicksites (this maybe was the right choice).
New England Yearly Meeting of the RSOF
For many years the Quakers met annually either in Newport or at Flushing Meadows on Long Island. When the British army seized their meetinghouses because they would not assist in the war
against the Americans, Friends had to begin to meet elsewhere. We never looked back.
The New England Friends Home in Hingham MA
Yes, there is a paradise on earth. It is the New England Friends Home on Turkey Hill in Hingham, Massachusetts. Most of the old people who live there now are not Quakers,
but a Quaker worship group meets in the rec room there on First Days.
Famous Quakers:
Friend George Fox
A founding father of Quakerism. Heavy dude.
Friend Margaret Fell Fox
A founding mother of Quakerism. Just why is it that women can't preach?
Friend Elias Hicks of Jericho Monthly Meeting
Quakers are usually quite benevolent folks, but there was a time when we got so excited with one another, that we tore a table to pieces.
Well, it was more than a century and a half ago and since then we've cooled down a bit, but it is interesting and informative to go back and look at the pieces of that table we were struggling over.
Friend Lucretia Coffin Mott
Lucretia and James Mott are two of my favorite people. See why.
Friend Anthony Benezet
Quaker, educator, abolitionist.
Governor William Coddington of Rhode Island
Doesn't it seem strange now, to think of a Quaker as a Governor? How ever did we carry this off?
Friend Stephen Grellet
I came from France to befriend you.
Governor Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island
A governor of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, who had observed the transit of Venus, needed to be disowned by the local Friends meeting because he was wearing Quaker attire
while refusing to manumit (free) his slaves. This man, Governor Stephen Hopkins, did agree with the idea of freedom —at least abstractly, at least to a certain extent—
as witness the fact that (entirely disregarding the religious society's Peace Testimony) his shaky signature had appeared on our Declaration of Independence. It was such a sensitive situation that when the Religious Society of Friends
disassociated itself from him, they didn't even let it be generally know for several years that this had been done. Never again would a state governor pretend to be a Quaker.
Friend Mary Dyer of Newport
During our own lifetimes, on November 2, 1965 outside the Pentagon in Washington DC, making a personal protest against war in Vietnam, Friend Norman Morrison immolated himself,
and, on November 3, 2006 amost 41 years to the day later, there was another such self-immolation, this one at the Millennium Flame sculpture on the Kennedy Expressway near downtown Chicago.
This time it was peace activist Malachi Ritscher and this time the self-immolator’s protest was against war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps we need to use this occasion take a look at
the origins of Quaker self-martyrdom, something which goes way, way back, all the way back at least to Boston — for when Friend Mary Dyer traveled there from the safety of her island home in the Narraganset Bay to preach yet again, after once already having been excused
and warned by the Puritans only at the foot of the hanging tree on Boston Common, she had well known what fate she was choosing for herself.
Friend Paul Cuffe of Westport
He thought he was a Quaker — until he died and the white Quakers didn't bury him with the white Quakers. It is a tragic failure, and has led to the present world. In the present situation, the majority of Quakers are black and live in Africa, and in the present situation, the Quakers of England and America are very much whitebread and have just about never so much as heard of these black African Quakers. Friend Paul Cuffe had a white F/friend in Stephen Wanton Gould, the watch repairman of Newport, Rhode Island. Indeed, Friend Stephen attended Friend Paul on his deathbed. However, later on in his life Friend Stephen, a white man, came to abhor abolitionism, and abolitionists, as irreligious. Read this, try to figure it all out — history is sad.
Friend Ann Preston
She was a Quaker, and a woman, and a medical doctor. That's an exciting life.
Friend Maria Mitchell the astronomer
She had been disowned by her monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, and then she became the first woman to discover a new comet through a telescope.
Friend Moses Brown and his School
The founder of the Moses Brown School was really one grand guy, plus, he was very very rich, plus, imagine this, he had a wart on the end of his nose the size and color of a small cherry that didn't slow him down even one little bit. And that is only one of the four guys who have been named "Moses Brown"! Did you know that it was at the Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island that *Astroturf* was first tested? Did you know that in the winter this is the best place to take your kids sledding in the entire area?
Providence’s favorite draft dodger
Friend John Kellam is one of your neighbors on the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island, who worked until he retired as a City Planner for the city of Providence. These are his experiences during World War II, during which because he insisted upon the Quaker Peace Testimony he got stuck into a federal maximum security penitentiary. (I bet you didn't think things like that could happen in America! :-)
Friend John Dalton (not prepared yet)
Friend Prudence Crandall
Actually, she was totally immersed in a river, and became a Baptist, and then got married with a Baptist reverend, and after he died she toyed with becoming a 7th Day Adventist or Spiritual Scientist. Yes, but *somebody said* she was, like, a Quaker. Plus, she's famous.
Friend William Penn (not prepared yet)
Not quite Quakers:
Friend John Bartram (not prepared yet)
Associate Member of the Cambridge, Massachusetts Monthly Meeting Joan Baez
Is there a Quaker lady who says YES to boys who say NO?
Publik Universal Friend Jemimah Wilkinson
This is about as weird as it gets.
Elizabeth Buffum Chase (not prepared yet)
Friend Herbert Hoover (not prepared yet)
Friend George Keith (not prepared yet)
A.J. Muste
Sometimes a Friend, sometimes merely a reverend -- but always in opposition to warfare.
Friend Richard Milhouse Nixon (not prepared yet)
Robert Purvis: the joys and perils of being rich but not quite acceptably white in America
What is it like to be a rich man in America — but not socially acceptable? Would you imagine that because your wife was darker than you, and you had been seen helping your wife out of a carriage in front of a large public edifice in Philadelphia, that a mob would then burn that pillared edifice to the ground? —With the mayor and the fire chief watching? (What kind of America was that, in which we would do things like that? Does it bear any resemblance at all, to the America of today?)
Red-Headed Quaker Girl Kidnapped by Indians
What would you do as a parent if Indians came to kidnap your little auburn-haired daughter? As a Quaker, a believer in the Peace Testimony, you can't just shoot them. —But then, what happens? Under such extreme circumstances, does the Peace Testimony fail?
Friend John Woolman
Friend John Woolman and Henry David Thoreau were so deeply alike! However, I have been unable to verify that Thoreau ever read Woolman. Can anyone offer me a clue on this, please?
Less well-known Quakers:
Friend Hannah Barnard (not prepared yet)
Friend Arnold "the Hatter" Buffum
The Quaker Arnold Buffum was called "the hatter." You see, mercury was used in the processing of felt for hats, and so hatters tended to dementia on account of prolonged contact with poisonous fumes. Likewise, a person like Friend Arnold, who was concerned for the wellbeing of black Americans to the extent that he was actually helping them steal themselves away from their obligated service, must be the victim of some sort of dementia caused by incautious exposure to Unamerican ideas.
Governor Walter Clarke of Rhode Island
Friend Thomas Clarkson
Friend Peter Collinson (not prepared yet)
Friend Barclay Coppoc (not prepared yet)
Friend Edwin Coppoc (not prepared yet)
Friend William Dillwyn (not prepared yet)
Friend Jonathan Dymond (not prepared yet)
Friend William Edmundson (not prepared yet)
Friend Margaret Fell (not prepared yet)
Friend Abby Kelley Foster (not prepared yet)
Friend Elizabeth Fry
Friend Thomas Garrett (not prepared yet)
Friend Angelina Grimke
Some called her "Devilina" (her husband Theodore Dwight Weld was also a handfull).
Friend Sarah Grimke
She was such a force for the good, she sometimes irritated even her own little sister.
Friend Joseph John Gurney and the "Gurneyites"
Friend Edward Hicks
Friend Johns Hopkins (not prepared yet)
Friend Isaac Tatum Hopper (not prepared yet)
William and Mary Howitt
Friend Oliver Johnson (not prepared yet)
Friend John R. Kellam of Providence
Friend John is one of your neighbors on the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island, who worked until he retired as a City Planner for the city of Providence. These are his experiences during World War II, during which because he insisted upon the Quaker Peace Testimony he got stuck into a federal maximum security penitentiary. (I bet you didn't think things like that could happen in America! :-)
Friend Benjamin Lay (not prepared yet)
Friend Alfred H. Love (not prepared yet)
Friend Benjamin Lundy (not prepared yet)
Friend Mary Buffum Mansfield (not prepared yet)
Friend Warren Sturgis McCulloch (not prepared yet)
Friend Austin Meredith (not kept online)
Friend James Mott
Friend James Nayler (not prepared yet)
Friend Amelia Opie (not prepared yet)
Friend David Orrok, Senior (not prepared yet)
Friend David Orrok, Junior (not prepared yet)
Friend Sarah Tillet Orrok (not prepared yet)
Friend Amy Post (not prepared yet)
Friend Isaac Post (not prepared yet)
Friend Daniel Ricketson (not prepared yet)
Friend Mary Rotch (not prepared yet)
Friend Bayard Rustin
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr's right-hand man was a Quaker.
Friend William Sewel (not prepared yet)
Friend Thomas Shillitoe (not prepared yet)
Friend Francis Slocum
Was this little redheaded Quaker girl the original Little Orphan Annie? If so, where was Daddy Warbucks?
Friend Joseph Sturge (not prepared yet)
Friend William C. Taber (not prepared yet)
Friend Jeanne Whitaker of Providence (not prepared yet)
Friend Sarah Helen Power Whitman (not prepared yet)
Friend Deborah Wilson (not prepared yet)
Friend Nathan Winslow (not prepared yet)
Friend Horod Long Hicks Gardiner Porter
It was apparently just as hard to keep it in your pants, in colonial New England, as it is now. —It seems to have been especially hard to keep it in your pants if you were around the swiving Friend Horod, whom some persons had for no good reason been terming "The Quaker Whore." Watch out, she'll ask that you be forgiven!
Friends Floyd and Ruth Schmoe
You know that old Oriental curse, "May you live in interesting times"? Well, actually, this isn’t an old Oriental curse at all: it’s merely something that has been made up by Westerners and put in the mouth of their Other, which is to say, when you read a newspaper columnist and come across this gem, you need to remember that it’s merely another chunk of a general problem Westerners have, one that travels under the name "Orientalism."
Be that as it may. This thing that you will be reading right now, what it is about, it is about a Quaker couple in Seattle, the Schmoes — and it is about the "interesting times" in which Floyd and Ruth Schmoe lived: Big wars. Big concentration camps. Big bombs. Really bad stuff. And, it is about the fine manner in which this Quaker couple responded.
There’s no monster in this story. There is a monster mountain, a fine big mountain, a paradise of a mountain, Mount Rainier. There’s a moral in this story, as well, a fine big moral, a paradise of a moral.
It is that you need to live like a Schmoe.
Friend Polly Thayer Starr
Would you like to see a selfportrait of a Quaker artist, done while she was young? Did I mention, Polly was beautiful?
Friends Daniel Ricketson of New Bedford
Henry David Thoreau's good old buddy.
Friend Joseph Ricketson of New Bedford
Underground Railroad operative who helped Frederick Douglass hide from American justice and retribution.
Friend Luke Howard
Friend Luke Howard was the first real weatherman. He categorized the shapes and conditions of the clouds, etc.
Friend Abraham Redwood of Newport RI
My goodness what a cute portrait of a well-to-do Quaker! I wonder how many black slaves he benevolently provides for?
Henry David Thoreau Speaks to Quakers
A question has been raised on the internet: "Would anyone care to tell me whether there is any evidence that Thoreau was directly influenced by Quakerism? I have never heard of such an influence, but I have not made any serious effort to research this. And yes, I do now see just how much the Friend John Woolman and Thoreau were alike. (Simplicity. A concern to not abuse domesticated animals. Anti-slavery. Etc.)" To respond to this inquiry, I have wracked my brains to think of a single instance in which a major American author has risen during the silence of a Quaker meeting for worship, and spoken a message to assembled Friends. I suppose that Friend John Greenleaf Whittier must have at one point or another done so, but if so, we don't have a record of it. The sole such author I can think of who has ever done so, of which I have an actual definitive record, was Thoreau. Here is the context in which Thoreau spoke to Quakers.
(Stay Tuned, Much More is Coming!) |
