Levi Coffin was an American Quaker, Republican, abolitionist, farmer, businessman and humanitarian. An active leader of the Underground Railroad in Indiana and Ohio, some unofficially called Coffin the "President of the Underground Railroad," estimating that three thousand fugitive slaves passed through his care. The Coffin home in Fountain City, Wayne County, Indiana, is now a museum, sometimes called the Underground Railroad's "Grand Central Station".
The Religious Society of Friends began as a proto-evangelical Christian movement in England in the mid-17th century in Lancashire. Members are informally known as Quakers, as they were said "to tremble in the way of the Lord". The movement in its early days faced strong opposition and persecution, but it continued to expand across the British Isles and then in the Americas and Africa.
Conservative Friends are members of a certain branch of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). In the United States of America, Conservative Friends belong to three Yearly Meetings, Ohio, North Carolina, and Iowa. English Friends affiliated with the Conservative branch tend to use the term Primitive, or Plain. There is no single unifying association of Conservative Friends, unlike three of the other branches of Quakerism in America, represented by Friends United Meeting, Evangelical Friends International, and Friends General Conference.
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to experience the light within or see "that of God in every one". Some profess a priesthood of all believers inspired by the First Epistle of Peter. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional Quaker understandings of Christianity. There are also Nontheist Quakers, whose spiritual practice does not rely on the existence of God. To differing extents, the Friends avoid creeds and hierarchical structures. In 2017, there were an estimated 377,557 adult Quakers, 49% of them in Africa.
Deborah Fisher Wharton (1795–1888) was an American Quaker minister, suffragist, social reformer and proponent of women's rights. She was one of a small group of dedicated Quakers who founded Swarthmore College along with her industrialist son, Joseph Wharton. She was a contemporary and friend of Lucretia Mott and had many of Mott's sympathies but did not actively pursue the women's rights cause, rather she was a proponent of liberal Quaker spirituality.
The Coffin House is a National Historic Landmark located in the present-day town of Fountain City in Wayne County, Indiana. The two-story, eight room, brick home was constructed circa 1838–39 in the Federal style. The Coffin home became known as the "Grand Central Station" of the Underground Railroad because of its location where three of the escape routes to the North converged and the number of fleeing slaves who passed through it.
Greensboro Township is one of thirteen townships in Henry County, Indiana, United States. As of the 2010 census, its population was 1,728 and it contained 715 housing units.
Amawalk Friends Meeting House is located on Quaker Church Road in Yorktown Heights, New York, United States. It is a timber frame structure built in the 1830s. In 1989 it and its adjoining cemetery were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Birmingham Friends Meetinghouse is a historic Quaker meeting house at 1245 Birmingham Road in Birmingham Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. The current meetinghouse was built in 1763. The building and the adjacent cemetery were near the center of fighting on the afternoon of September 11, 1777 at the Battle of Brandywine. Worship services are held weekly at 10am. The meetinghouse and adjacent octagonal schoolhouse were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Birmingham Friends Meetinghouse and School on July 27, 1971.
Old Kennett Meetinghouse is a historic meeting house of the Religious Society of Friends or "Quakers" in Kennett Township near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
Chichester Friends Meetinghouse is a historic Quaker meeting house at 611 Meetinghouse Road near Boothwyn, in Upper Chichester Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. This area, near Chester, was one of the earliest areas settled by Quakers in Pennsylvania. The meetinghouse, first built in 1688, then rebuilt after a fire in 1769, reflects this early Quaker heritage. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
The Green Plain Monthly Meetinghouse is a historic former Quaker house of worship near South Charleston in Clark County, Ohio, United States. Built in 1843, it was used by a part of a monthly meeting that was established in the area in 1822. The original Green Plain Monthly Meeting lasted for only a short while, splitting into Orthodox and Hicksite branches just four years after it was founded: the Orthodox members settled in the community of Selma, while the Hicksites kept the original property. In turn, the Hicksites split in 1843 over the issue of slavery; the liberal party kept the original church, while the conservatives moved to South Charleston-Clifton Road and built the present building.
The Mercer Street Friends Center is located at 151 Mercer Street in the Mill Hill neighborhood of the city Trenton in Mercer County, New Jersey. Built in 1858, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 12, 1971, for its significance in architecture, religion, and social history. It was added as a contributing property to the Mill Hill Historic District in 1977. It now houses the main offices of Mercer Street Friends, a Trenton-based Quaker-affiliated social service agency founded in 1958.
The Quakers immigrated from New York, the New England States and Pennsylvania. They are a pacifist religion, and during this period were also a "plain folk" rejecting all ornamentation in clothing, speech and meeting houses (churches). The Children of Peace were founded during the War of 1812 after a schism in York County. A further schism occurred in 1828, leaving two branches, "Orthodox" Quakers and "Hicksite" Quakers.
Benjamin Franklin Trueblood (1847–1916) was an American pacifist who served the American Peace Society for 23 years. In this role, he functioned as the official public spokesperson and representative of the Society. He served as editor of the Society's journal, The Advocate of Peace which contained numerous articles by Trueblood. He was elected to the executive council of American Society of International Law in 1905.
Fair Hill Burial Ground is a historic cemetery in the Fairhill neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded by the Religious Society of Friends in 1703, it fell into disuse until the 1840s when it was revived by the Hicksite Quaker community of Philadelphia, which played an important role in the abolition and early women's rights movements. The cemetery is currently operated by the Fair Hill Burial Corporation, which is owned by Quakers and neighborhood community members.
Newberry Friends Meeting House, now the Friends of Jesus Fellowship Friends Church, is a historic Quaker meeting house and cemetery located in Paoli Township, Orange County, Indiana. It was built in 1856, and is a one-story, rectangular, vernacular Greek Revival style frame building. It sits on a rubble limestone foundation and is sheathed in clapboard siding. The adjacent cemetery was established in 1818, and the earliest marked burials date to the 1840s. The congregation played a significant role in the settlement of African Americans in Orange County.
The Roaring Creek Friends Meeting House is a historic place of worship for members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, in rural Columbia County, Pennsylvania, near Numidia on Quaker Meeting House Road.
