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From:
Subject: [Q-R] Query
Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2003 12:58:21 EST


I don't know whether the query by M.E. Sorensen, first submitted on
01/03/2003 has been satisfactorily answered.

The comment: "Manumitted slaves" in Quaker records, probably meant that the
person or persons named in the records had manumittted their slaves.

In the years from 1680 to 1780 there was much slave-holding among well-to-do
Quakers in the American Colonies. Although this practice was especially
prevalent in the South, below the Mason-Dixon Line, it also seemed to extend
as far north as among Friends in Newport, Rhode Island, although I am not
very familiar with early New England Quaker history. I am fairly certain
that there was some slave-holding among Friends in Southern New Jersey, in
Philadelphia, and in Bucks County, PA.

In the mid-1700's, under the leadership of John Woolman and others, there was
a campaign to rid the Society-of-Friends of slave-holding, and by 1780 the
practice was being rapidly eliminated by Friends,even in the South.

One of the leaders among the abolitionists among Friends in Delaware was
Warner Mifflin, who lived in his later years at Camden, south of Dover,
Delaware. When I was doing research in the Pennsylvania Historical Library
at 1300 Locust Street in Philadelphia, I saw a large book filled with
Manumission Records, compiled by Warner Mifflin and by Edward Lay, a Friend
from Cold Spring Meeting near Lewes, Delaware. In the years ca. 1774 and
1775,.these Friends seemed to have travelled from plantation to plantation in
Kent County, Delaware, persuading the Quaker proprietors to manumit (free)
their slaves. There are long lists of Blacks who were given their freedom by
this effort.

It is my understanding that, while Blacks were allowed to attend Quaker
Meeting in most neighborhoods, only a few actually became members of Friends.

In early Colonial times, there were many White indentured servants, both men
and women, who had had their passage from the British Isles paid, with the
understanding that they would be req uired to work for up to eight years
in the Colonies to pay back their passage money and maintenance. However, at
the end of this period of indenturship, they became free citizens. Black
slaves from Africa were never granted their freedom.

- Herbert Standing, 1806 Bear Creek Road, Earlham, Iowa 50072.

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