A Friend Among Quakers

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Friend Among Quakers On the balmy evening of May 3, 1784, Anthony Benezet affectionately bade farewell to his wife Joyce. Philadelphia’s most admired Quaker reformer, suffering from a prolonged illness, realized that death was near and took to his bed on the second story of their modest Chestnut Street residence. “We have lived long, in love and peace,” he comforted his spouse of forty-eight years....
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Letters

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters Compelling in Themselves Having caught up, belatedly, with the Spring 2010 edition of Pennsylvania Heritage, I am bowled over with the depth of its coverage of Black history in the Commonwealth. Cumberland Willis Posey’s fortitude and subsequent enrichment of the broad community, the tales of so many brave civil rights activists, including the remarkable Forten women, aided by my favorite Quaker...
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Our First Friends, the Early Quakers

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Our First Friends, the Early Quakers Armed with a charter granted by England’s King Charles II, William Penn (1644-1718) and one hundred travel-weary Quakers arrived in the New World aboard the Welcome on October 27, 1682, with the intention of establishing the founder’s “holy experiment,” a colony that would be free of the religious persecution they suffered abroad. Once safely docked in the Delaware Bay at...
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