Free Quakers

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The Religious Society of Free Quakers, originally called "The Religious Society of Friends, by some styled the Free Quakers," was established on February 20, 1781 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More commonly known as Free Quakers, the Society was founded by members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, who had been expelled for failure to adhere to the Peace Testimony during the American Revolutionary War. Many of its early members were prominent Quakers involved in the American Revolution before the society was established.

Philadelphia Largest city in Pennsylvania, United States

Philadelphia, known colloquially as Philly, is the largest city in the U.S. state and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the sixth-most populous U.S. city, with a 2018 census-estimated population of 1,584,138. Since 1854, the city has been coterminous with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the eighth-largest U.S. metropolitan statistical area, with over 6 million residents as of 2017. Philadelphia is also the economic and cultural anchor of the greater Delaware Valley, located along the lower Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, within the Northeast megalopolis. The Delaware Valley's population of 7.2 million ranks it as the eighth-largest combined statistical area in the United States.

Quakers family of religious movements

Quakers, also called Friends, are a historically Christian group of religious movements formally known as the Religious Society of Friends, Society of Friends or Friends Church. Members of the various Quaker movements are all generally united in a belief in the ability of each human being to experientially access the light within, or "that of God in every one".

Peace Testimony

Peace testimony, or testimony against war, is a shorthand description of the action generally taken by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) for peace and against participation in war. Like other Quaker testimonies, it is not a "belief", but a description of committed actions, in this case to promote peace, and refrain from and actively oppose participation in war. Quakers' original refusal to bear arms has been broadened to embrace protests and demonstrations in opposition to government policies of war and confrontations with others who bear arms, whatever the reason, in the support of peace and active nonviolence. Because of this core testimony, the Religious Society of Friends is considered one of the traditional peace churches.

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Notable Free Quakers at the early meetings included Samuel Wetherill, who served as clerk and preacher; Timothy Matlack and his brother White Matlack; William Crispin; Colonel Clement Biddle and his brother Owen Biddle; Benjamin Say; Christopher Marshall; Joseph Warner; and Peter Thompson. [1] Other notable Free Quakers include Lydia Darragh and Betsy Ross.

Timothy Matlack American brewer

Timothy Matlack was a brewer and beer bottler who emerged as a popular and powerful leader in the American Revolutionary War, Secretary of Pennsylvania during the war, and a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in 1780. He became one of Pennsylvania's most provocative and influential political figures, but he was removed from office by his political enemies at the end of the war; however, he returned to power in the Jeffersonian era. Matlack was known for his excellent penmanship and was chosen to write the original United States Declaration of Independence on vellum.

White Matlack to Elizabeth Martha Burr Haines and Timothy Matlack: a couple that had both lost their first spouses. His grandparents were William Matlack and Mary Hancock; and Henry Burr and Elizabeth Hudson. His siblings were Sybil, Elizabeth, Titus, Seth, Josiah and Timothy Matlack. He was a New York Quaker and abolitionist.

Clement Biddle American soldier

Colonel Clement Biddle was an American Revolutionary War soldier.

Following the end of the American Revolutionary War, the number of Free Quakers began to dwindle as some members died and others were either accepted back into the Society of Friends or by other religious institutions. The final meeting of the Free Quakers was held in 1836. There is a small group of Free Quakers in Indiana who continue the tradition of the Five Principles (Inner Light, peace, simplicity, justice, stewardship) and the Five Freedoms (from creeds, from clergy, from public worship, from organized membership, from evangelization). Today, the descendants of the original Free Quakers hold an annual meeting of the Religious Society of Free Quakers at the Free Quaker Meetinghouse in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[ citation needed ]

Free Quaker Meetinghouse church building in Pennsylvania, United States of America

The Free Quaker Meetinghouse is a historic Free Quaker meeting house at the southeast corner of 5th and Arch Streets in the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was built in 1783, and is a plain 2 1/2-story brick building with a gable roof. The second floor was added in 1788. The building was moved about 30 feet to its present site in 1961, to allow for the widening of Fifth Street.

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References

  1. ↑ Charles Wetherill, History of the Religious Society of Friends Called by Some the Free Quakers, in the City of Philadelphia, 1894, "The History of the Free Quakers" October 26, 2010


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