Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Essay

Much as New England was shaped by its Puritan heritage, the history of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley intertwined heavily with the Religious Society of Friends. Philadelphia gained one of its nicknames, “The Quaker City,” from its founding and settlement by the Friends, colloquially known as Quakers, a historically Christian religious sect that emerged during the English Civil War (1642-51). Although less influential in Philadelphia after the eighteenth century, the Religious Society of Friends remained a vital part of the city’s religious landscape.

A black and white engraving of George Fox
George Fox founded the Quaker faith after traveling England seeking religious truth. The new movement quickly spread across the country and into North America. (Library of Congress)

Quakerism grew out of the ministry of George Fox (1624-91), a shoemaker’s apprentice who rejected the special authority of university-trained priests and ministers, arguing that divine revelation was accessible to anyone. Fox believed that Jesus “had come to teach his people himself” and that this occurred in the form of an “inward light” that was present and accessible to human beings. By gathering together in silence with other believers, which was called a “Meeting for Worship,” Quakers believed that individuals might be directly influenced by God to offer vocal ministry.

One of the notable features of this new religious group was its relative egalitarianism. While early Quakers did not seek to abolish all earthly hierarchies, they spurned established custom by addressing everyone (including those of higher social status) using the informal plain speech of “thee” and “thou,” language that was normally reserved for intimates. One embodiment of Quaker faith was the adoption of “plain dress,” unadorned clothing designed to defy the custom of having fashion signify social status. In pursuit of this same social goal, men in the Quaker sect violated established custom by not doffing their hats to their social superiors.

A black and white photograph of a group of Quaker women in traditional plain dress outside of a Meeting House
Until the early twentieth century, the Quaker belief in simplicity dictated that members of the church wear plain dress, a practice that increasingly set them apart from modern society. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

This concept of equality also extended to the idea that both sexes were equal in spiritual matters. Early Quakers believed that women had the same authority to preach in meeting as men did, and, like their male counterparts, women often traveled in their ministry. Within and among local congregations (Quakers called these “Meetings”), committees of women known as “Womens’ Meetings” were empowered to carry out some of the group’s administration, and their decisions were supposed to be of equal value to the governance provided by the “Men’s Meetings.”

The Quakers’ understanding of Christianity led to the group being different from its neighbors in other ways. They professed a “peace testimony,” which called on their members to avoid violence and warfare. And though it was a common requirement in courts of law at the time, Quakers also refused to swear oaths, arguing that Jesus had forbidden the practice in the New Testament. Because of these differences and their belief that they alone correctly practiced Christianity, Quakers were endogamous, marrying only within their own group and expelling members who married non-Quakers.

William Penn’s “Holy Experiment”

Because of their distinctive religious practices and their rejection of the established Anglican Church, the Quakers endured significant persecution in England and thousands were forced to pay fines or imprisoned. By the 1670s Quakers had begun to consider the possibility of immigrating to North America to escape religious oppression. In 1680 William Penn (1644-1718), a prominent leader with the Quaker movement, received a land grant for a new colony from English monarch Charles II as a payment for a debt that the king had owed to Penn’s father, William Penn. The elder William, who had been an admiral in the Royal Navy, became the namesake for the new colony.

a painting depicting the tradtional story of William Penn's treaty with the Lenni Lenape
Pennsylvania was founded as a Quaker colony by William Penn. According to legend, he made a treaty with the local Lenape Indians vowing eternal peace between Quaker colonists and natives. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)

Penn saw the colony as a religious venture, a “holy experiment,” and he designed the laws of the new colony to be congenial to Quakers. No oaths were required in courts or to hold public offices, Quaker-style marriage ceremonies were made the legal form of marriage, and because of past Quaker experiences with persecution, religious liberty was extended to all monotheists.

The colony’s capital, Philadelphia, became the site of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM), an aggregation of Quakers in the Philadelphia region. Extending over a particular geographic location, PYM comprised several Quarterly Meetings, which in turn were composed of multiple Monthly Meetings (similar to congregations). Though technically separate from the civil government, important Quaker men tended to be elected to fill leadership roles in both bodies, so much so that historian Arthur J. Merkel has suggested that “the relationship [of the Yearly Meeting] with the government resembled an interlocking directorate.” Though other Yearly Meetings existed in New England, Maryland, and North Carolina, PYM soon became the most influential grouping outside of London.

War and Peace

By the 1750s Quakers’ involvement with Pennsylvania politics began to conflict with their commitment to nonviolence. In 1754 when the French and Indian War began, the British government instructed Pennsylvania to equip an army to prepare to fight. Many Quakers in the colonial legislature were initially willing to comply. However, after Catherine Payton (1727-94), a visiting English Quaker minister, exhorted them to adhere to Quakerism’s peace testimony, many reconsidered. When the Assembly voted to go to war regardless, Quakers resigned en masse rather than violate their peace testimony. As historian Rebecca Larson has explained, this was “the beginnings of a movement that would finally end with the complete exodus of Quakers from government twenty years later.” Over the next several centuries, only a small number of Quakers have served in elected positions. Many Quakers, however, redirected their public-service energies into various forms of philanthropy, an arena where Quakers have brought high participation and leadership.

The issue of Quaker participation in war arose again during the American Revolution. Most Quakers refused to take part in this conflict because of their avowed pacifism, causing persistent accusations that they were loyal to the British crown. Some Friends were disowned, or expelled, from Quaker Meetings for serving with the American army. These included a small group that founded a splinter denomination, the Free Quakers, which existed into the early nineteenth century.

A black and white drawing of John Woolman
Quaker John Woolman was an early outspoken proponent of abolitionism. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

By the early eighteenth century some Quakers had become increasingly skeptical about the compatibility of slavery with their religious convictions. By the early 1700s, the PYM and other Yearly Meetings began exhorting Quakers not to import enslaved people, and in the ensuing years they put out a number of pronouncements advising Friends to avoid slaveholding. Influential Quaker members of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, particularly John Woolman (1720-72) and Anthony Benezet (1713-84), stressed the immorality of slaveholding and its tendency to corrupt masters into such sins as haughtiness, laziness, and violence.

Beginning in the 1690s, individual members’ arguments against slavery became increasingly vocal and insistent. By the 1770s, PYM’s constituency had become mostly united behind the policy that any Quaker who bought, sold, or held slaves should be barred from membership. In subsequent years PYM helped to coalesce the national efforts to petition Congress to end the slave trade entirely.

Quakers Support an Abolition Society

A black and white image of Lucretia Mott
Quaker activist Lucretia Mott founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

Philadelphia Quakers’ disdain for slavery led them to help found the nation’s first abolitionist organization in 1775, when seven Quakers were among the ten men who gathered at the Rising Sun Tavern and created the Society for the Relief of Free Negros Unlawfully Held in Bondage. This society brought a number of lawsuits to secure the freedom of African Americans who had been kidnapped into slavery, or whose rights had otherwise been breached. In 1787 (after state legislation in 1780 provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in the commonwealth) the group expanded to include more non-Quakers, and renamed itself the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, also expanding its mission to include slaves. The next generation of Pennsylvania Quakers included a number of leading abolitionists such as noted Quaker minister Lucretia Mott (1793-1880); these radicals spearheaded the creation of the Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society in 1833.

Slavery was not the only social issue about which Philadelphia Quakers were vocal. In the late eighteenth century they were pioneering reformers, creating a number of organizations designed to improve life for their neighbors. Quaker women in particular were active in establishing Philadelphia’s first philanthropic and charitable societies. The Female Society for Relief of the Distressed, founded in the 1790s, sought to minister to the “Inner Light” in every individual by clothing, feeding and providing nursing care to the poor, while the Aimwell School was established to provide primary education to poor girls.

Prison reform was another key concern of Philadelphia Friends. In the 1770s a group of Quakers founded the Philadelphia Society for Relieving Distressed Prisoners, which was intended to improve conditions in the city’s prisons. During the ensuing decades this group was heavily involved in developing the Walnut Street Jail, the first “penitentiary” in the United States. At Walnut Street, rather than incessant labor, prisoners were to be allotted quiet time by themselves to reflect, to read the Bible, and to be visited by church members who would help them to “repent” and to behave better in the future. The concept behind the new institution was drawn partially from Quaker religious practices, stressing the value of silence to facilitate an encounter with the divine. These concepts, first implemented at Walnut Street, became the prototype for the construction of Eastern State Penitentiary and the basis for the widely adopted “Pennsylvania System” of prison management.

Friends Divided

A black and white image of Elias Hicks
Quakers split over theological differences in the 1820s. Controversial preacher Elias Hicks was at the center of the controversy. (Library of Congress)

To outside observers early nineteenth century Quakerism must have seemed to be a harmonious success story. A new meetinghouse was built on Arch Street in 1804, and the membership Quakers rolls were high. Yet just a few years later Quakerism broke into several rival branches.

Though each faction laid claim to being the “true” Quakers, many factors led to the split between what would be known as Orthodox and Hicksite factions. Among these issues, the Orthodox claimed that the followers of Elias Hicks (1748-1830), a popular Long Island Quaker preacher, overemphasized belief in the Inward Light while underemphasizing the Bible. Hicks’s followers accused the Orthodox of abandoning traditional Quaker teachings on these subjects. In 1827 this conflict reached the breaking point during the gathering of PYM, when both factions tried to assert their rights to leadership.

The Hicksites stormed out the Arch Street Meeting House and built their own meetinghouse on Race Street. Over the following decades, Quaker yearly meetings in other regions of the United States experienced similar splits. The schism meant there were now two Philadelphia Yearly Meetings, one Hicksite and one Orthodox, with each side refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the other. By the 1830s, the Orthodox had established an all male school outside the city, which would eventually become Haverford College. Hicksites founded coeducational Swarthmore College in 1864, a few miles distant from Haverford. Decades later, in 1885, the Orthodox helped established Bryn Mawr College to educate women.

By the 1840s, in other Yearly Meetings, the Orthodox faction had further divided into into separate groups, the evangelically-inclined Gurneyites and the more traditional Wilburites. The Orthodox Philadelphia Yearly Meeting tried to avoid taking sides and essentially sealed themselves off from the rest of Quakerism. The Hicksites also were in a state of upheaval due to intense arguments over how vigorously abolition and women’s rights should be pursued. A short-lived group, the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends, even broke away from the Hicksite Yearly Meeting; for several decades they gathered at a meetinghouse in Longwood.

Reunification and Social Activism

Over the course of the nineteenth century Quakers in Philadelphia from both groups became receptive to liberal theological ideas, such as the idea that the Bible was the product of a particular ancient historical era, or the truth of the theory of the evolution. By the early twentieth century Quakers had given up most of the peculiarities of dress and speech that separated them so visibly from the rest of the population, and began to intermarry with non-Quakers; they no longer saw these things as being essential to their faith. Religious leaders like Haverford Professor Rufus Jones (1863-1948) pioneered a new understanding of Quakerism as a mystical religion uniquely suited to the modern age.

Arch Street Meeting House was built on the city's earliest Quaker burial ground in 1804. It was made a National Historic Landmark in 2011. (Library Company of Philadelphia)
Arch Street Meeting House was built on the city’s earliest Quaker burial ground in 1804. It was made a National Historic Landmark in 2011. (Library Company of Philadelphia)

In the effort to reunite the divided parts of Quakerism, Jones and other influential Quakers helped to develop the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Philadelphia-based organization intended to unite Quakers through a common interest that would transcend the Hicksite-Orthodox theological separation by focusing instead on relief, peace, and charitable work for others. The AFSC’s efforts included advocating for interracial justice in the United States, providing food to starving miners in labor disputes in Appalachia, and trying to rebuild Europe after both world wars. One of the largest undertakings was feeding millions of needy German children a day after the end of World War I. For its relief efforts worldwide, particularly during and after the world wars, the AFSC shared the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize with the English Quaker-run Friends Service Council.

Quaker gathering during Occupy Wall Street encampment, City Hall, Philadelphia, October 11, 2011.
Quakers were a friendly presence during the Occupy Philadelphia demonstrations that were part of the nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement of late 2011. Here, a Quaker-organized service takes place in the shadow of the City Hall encampment. (Photograph by Donald D. Groff for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia)

These shared efforts helped facilitate a reunification of the fractured PYM in 1955, which was part of a similar reunion undertaken by many of the other Quaker factions in the United States. Subsequent decades saw Philadelphia Friends trying to uphold their denomination’s traditional testimonies of equality and peace by supporting the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1960s, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting tried to assist minority communities, undertaking community development project in Chester, Pennsylvania, and establishing the Minorities Economic Development Fund to fund similar projects around Philadelphia. Pennsylvania Quakers also were harshly critical of the Vietnam War. In 1967 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting expressed its support for a group of Quaker activists who illegally sent medical supplies to North Vietnam in the ship Phoenix, an action prompted by both humanitarianism and a desire to protest the ongoing conflict. Gay and lesbian issues were a third area of concern; in 1973 PYM publicly voiced its support for gay rights, and by 1991 it was publishing a guide for same-sex couples that wanted to be married in Quaker ceremonies. Increasingly, the majority of Quakers in the Philadelphia region identified themselves as politically liberal, and many saw these beliefs as intertwined with their religious identities.

Quaker populations became substantially older in the twentieth century, causing many local meetings to focus on providing retirement care. By 2016 many Quaker-inspired retirement communities operated near Philadelphia, such as Kendal, Pennwood Village, and Foulkeways. Often they originated nonprofits at the prompting of members of local Meetings. These communities often boasted well-attended Quaker Meetings, though only a fraction of their residents were Quakers.

Since the mid-1970s Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has gathered at the Friends Center, a building at Fifteenth and Cherry Streets built in 1974. Statistics from 2010 indicated that the Yearly Meeting then had 11,800 members spread across the Philadelphia region among 106 monthly Meetings, a precipitous drop from more than 30,000 members in 1775 or even the 15,000 recorded members in 1925. Although declining membership numbers have been a source of concern for the denomination, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s central role in Quaker history has meant that it continued to be an influential body within American—and indeed international– Quakerism.

Isaac Barnes May is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He has previously published articles in Quaker History and Quaker Studies. (Author information current at time of publication.)

Gallery

George Fox

Library of Congress

The Religious Society of Friends was founded in England by George Fox, a shoemaker's apprentice. Fox experienced a crisis of faith in the 1640s leading him to travel the country seeking other dissenters. Beginning in 1647, Fox preached across England. At one early meeting a local preacher silenced a woman in his congregation and Fox demanded she be allowed to speak, an early example of the Quakers' commitment to egalitarianism. Despite persecution and imprisonment, Fox's teachings spread across England, including several instances where he converted the very men tasked with his imprisonment. Fox traveled to America to spread his message in 1872, nine years in advance of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. Quakers were outlawed in England until the Toleration Act in 1689. Fox died in London two years later.

Penn's treaty with the Indians

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

The colony of Pennsylvania was founded by Quaker William Penn, who had been granted a charter by King Charles II in repayment of a debt. Penn hoped Pennsylvania would be his “holy experiment,” a land full of virtuous people whose morals and ethics would shape the government and society. This painting, Penn’s Treaty with the Indians by Benjamin West, shows the gathering where, according to legend, Penn signed a treaty with the local Lenape Indian tribe promising eternal peace between the two groups. It came to be known as the Treaty of Shackamaxon. Quaker values put a strong emphasis on peace; during the American Revolution, most Quakers refused to participate in the fighting due to their vow of pacifism.

John Woolman

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

New Jersey-born Quaker John Woolman was an active and outspoken abolitionist from as early as the 1740s, when he traveled the south to observe slave labor personally. He penned the essay Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, published in 1754, which stressed the equality of man without directly attacking slaveholders. Shortly after its publication, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting ruled that members who purchased or sold slaves would be removed from church positions of power. Woolman was also a pioneer of the Free Produce movement, shunning cotton and other goods produced by slave labor beginning in the early 1760s.

Franklin and the Quakers

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania was established a Quaker colony and as such, many of the early leaders of government belonged to the Religious Society of Friends. As other religions, especially Presbyterianism, rose to prominence in Philadelphia, people began to resent the Quaker influence on Pennsylvania's government, especially with regards to their treatment of local Native American tribes during a time of increased tension between the tribes and settlers. This political cartoon dating to the French and Indian War shows a group of Quaker politicians and their reaction to the uprisings on the Pennsylvania frontier.

On the left, Israel Pemberton, the “King of the Quakers,” arms a group of Native Americans with tomahawks. Pemberton was a strong proponent of preserving William Penn's promise of eternal peace between the Quakers and the local tribes, and often argued that colonists should wait for clear consent from the Lenape before buying or selling any new land. Behind him, a group of Quakers including Joseph Fox, president of the Carpenters' Company of Philadelphia, depicted here as a fox, lament the growing “Paxton spirit” on the frontier. The Paxtons were a group of Presbyterian vigilantes who, in 1764, killed twenty-one peaceful Susquehannock traders in the village of Conestoga in retaliation for the unrelated Pontiac's War attacks on white settlers in the Great Lakes region. Benjamin Franklin stands in front, holding a bag labeled “Pennsylvania money,” remarking that he doesn't care as long as he wins the election.

Elias Hicks

Library of Congress

The Quaker faith split into two distinct groups in the late 1820s. Controversial Quaker preacher Elias Hicks was at the center of the controversy. Hicks stressed the “Inner light” over the scripture and argued against major tenants of Christianity such as the virgin birth of Christ and the original sin. This opposed a growing Evangelical movement in Quakerism, where congregations increasingly moved towards more conventional worship. By 1828, Hicks' followers left the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to form the Hicksite Branch of the Quaker faith, while those remaining became the Orthodox branch. This schism spread across the United States and Canada; it was not resolved until 1968.

Hicks was born on Long Island, New York, in 1748 and became a Quaker in his twenties. He helped build the meetinghouse in Jericho, New York, which remains in use today. He was a staunch abolitionist and, in the early nineteenth century, petitioned the New York State government for more stringent manumission laws. In 1811, he penned Observations on the Slavery of Africans and Their Descendants, arguing against both slavery and the purchase and use of products of slave labor. This work was a major influence on the later Free Produce movement. According to witnesses, Hicks was so dedicated to this cause that, on his deathbed, he was greatly concerned with a cotton blanket brought to him and could not be calmed until a wool replacement was offered. Hicks died in 1830, just two years after the Hicksite/Orthodox schism erupted.

Lucretia Mott

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Some of the earliest proponents of abolition were Quakers. The first abolition society, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS), was founded by Quakers in 1776 at the Rising Sun Tavern. The PAS did not allow women among its ranks and so Quaker minister Lucretia Mott and other abolitionist women formed the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS) in 1833. PFASS was one of the few integrated abolitionist societies, allowing black women, such as cofounder Margaretta Forten, to both join and serve as board members. The organization raised funds to help fugitive slaves, educate free blacks, and petition both state and federal governments to abolish slavery.

Mott, born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, was raised in a Quaker home and moved to Philadelphia in 1811. She was a lifelong abolitionist. Her husband was James Mott, one of the founding members of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, who funded the construction of Pennsylvania Hall, famously destroyed by anti-abolition rioters three days after its completion. The Motts's home was also targeted by rioters that night, but was spared. In 1840, Mott was one of six women chosen to speak at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Upon arrival, she and the other women, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were told they would not be allowed to speak. In 1848, Mott and Stanton organized the Seneca Falls Convention, the first major women's rights convention in the United States. Mott was one of the founders of Swarthmore College and, after the Civil War, crusaded for women's suffrage.

Quaker Women Outside the Meetinghouse

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

From its early days, the Religious Society of Friends was noted for its relative egalitarianism. Women were able to become ministers and hold positions of power within the church. Quakers also valued simplicity, which was reflected in the way they dressed. This group of Quaker women wears the traditional plain garb of a long dress, cape, and bonnet. Men's attire typically included an unadorned shirt, vest, and hat. In the early days, Quakers typically used “plain speech,” using the informal “thee” and “thou” and avoiding official titles. These practices were largely abandoned in the early twentieth century.

Walnut Street Jail

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Quaker influence on Philadelphia and the nation can be found in unexpected places. The Walnut Street Jail, built in 1773 to relieve overcrowding at the older High Street Jail, was the site of a Quaker experiment in the reform of criminals. Originally, the prison was built as a series of large rooms housing groups of prisoners with little regard for their wellbeing, leading to frequent fights between inmates. Quaker reformers envisioned a place of repentance and prayer–a penitentiary–that would rehabilitate the prisoners. A penitentiary cell block was built onto the existing structure in 1790, the first in the nation to provide prisoners with individual cells. Forced labor was abolished, replaced by a system of solitary confinement the Quakers believed prisoners would use for reflection and repentance. This became the basis for the “Pennsylvania system” of prisons. In 1829, a new penitentiary based on this model, Eastern State Penitentiary, replaced Walnut Street Jail.

Arch Street Meeting House

Library Company of Philadelphia

The Arch Street Friends' Meeting House was constructed in 1804. The land was deeded to the Society of Friends by William Penn for use as a burial ground, though burials took place there as early as 1683. The burial ground was mostly full by the time of the meetinghouse’s construction. As Quakers in Philadelphia did not use headstones as part of the Quaker ideal of simplicity, the remains were largely left in the ground during construction. The building was designed to reflect this same simplicity. Unlike other places of worship in the area, the Arch Street Meeting House features few decorative embellishments inside or out. It is still in use and has changed very little in the past two centuries. The Arch Street Friends' Meeting House became a National Historic Landmark in 2011.

Quakers During Occupy Wall Street Protest

The Quakers, with their history of support for social justice causes, offered solidarity during the Occupy Philadelphia demonstrations that were part of the nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement of late 2011.

Here, a Quaker-organized service takes place in the shadow of the City Hall encampment on October 16, 2011, just a few days after the start of the protest.

The occupation of Dilworth Plaza on the west side of City Hall lasted nearly two months. During that time the organizers arranged for meals for participants, but conditions were basic in the concrete campground. The Quaker community joined in sponsoring services and provided another much-appreciated amenity—the use of restrooms in the Friends Center on Cherry Street, nearby in sight of City Hall. (Photograph by Donald D. Groff for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia)

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Related Reading

Barbour, Hugh, and J. William Frost. The Quakers. Richmond, Ind.: Friends United Meeting Press, 1988.

Dandelion, Pink. An Introduction to Quakerism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Dorsey, Bruce. Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002.

Endy, Melvin Jr. William Penn and Early Quakerism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973.

Fager, Chuck. Remaking Friends: How Progressive Friends Challenged Quakerism & Helped Save America. Durham, N.C.: Kimo Press, 2014.

Hamm, Thomas D. The Quakers in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

Jones, Rufus Matthew with Amelia M. Gummere, and Isaac Sharpless. The Quakers in the American Colonies. London: Macmillan, 1911.

Larson, Rebecca. Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700-1775. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Moore, John M., ed. Friends in the Delaware Valley. Haverford, Pa.: Friends Historical Assocation, 1981.

Russell, Elbert. The History of Quakerism. New York: Macmillian, 1942.

Angel, Stephen and Pink Dandelion , Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies. New York: Oxford Press, 2015.

Faith & Practice: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends, 2002.

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