Benjamin Lundy was an American Quaker abolitionist from New Jersey of the United States who established several anti-slavery newspapers and traveled widely. He lectured and published seeking to limit slavery's expansion and tried to find a place outside the United States to establish a colony in which freed slaves might relocate.
William Still was an African-American abolitionist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, businessman, writer, historian and civil rights activist. Before the American Civil War, Still was chairman of the Vigilance Committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. He directly aided fugitive slaves and also kept records of the people served in order to help families reunite.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an abolitionist, suffragist, poet, teacher, public speaker, and writer. She was one of the first African American women to be published in the United States.
The Province of Pennsylvania, also known as the Pennsylvania Colony, was founded by William Penn after receiving a land grant from Charles II of England in 1681. The name Pennsylvania refers to William's father, Admiral Sir William Penn. The Province of Pennsylvania was one of the two major Restoration colonies. The proprietary colony‘s charter remained in the hands of the Penn family until they were ousted by the American Revolution, when the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was created and became one of the original thirteen states. "The lower counties on Delaware", a separate colony within the province, broke away during the American Revolution as "the Delaware State" and also was one of the original thirteen states. The colony attracted Quakers, Germans, and Scots-Irish frontiersmen. The Peaceful Lenape promoted peace with the Quakers, but wars eventually broke out anyway after William Penn & Tamanend were no longer living, and Lenape beliefs were demonized even though the Quakers came seeking religious freedom. Philadelphia became a major port and commercial city.
The history of Pennsylvania begins in 1681 when William Penn received a royal deed from King Charles II of England, although human activity in the region precedes that date, like in 1643, when the area was first colonized by the Dutch. The area was home to the Lenape, Susquehannock, Iroquois, Erie, Shawnee, Arandiqiouia, and other American Indian tribes. Most of these tribes were driven off or reduced to remnants as a result of diseases, such as smallpox, that swept through long before any permanent European colonists arrived.
The Religious Society of Friends began as a 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.
The history of Delaware as a political entity dates back to the early colonization of North America by European-American settlers. It is made up of three counties established since 1638, before the time of William Penn. Each had its own settlement history. Their early inhabitants tended to identify more closely with the county than the colony or state. Large parts of southern and western Delaware were thought to have been in Maryland until 1767. All of the state has existed in the wide economic and political circle of Philadelphia.
William Whipper was an African-American abolitionist. Whipper was a successful businessman who played a key role in the antislavery movement as a reformer. He advocated nonviolence and co-founded the American Moral Reform Society, an early African-American abolitionist organization. William Whipper epitomized the unique prosperity that Northern Blacks were able to attain in the mid-19th century.
William Tennent was an early American religious leader and educator in British North America.
Quakers in North America constitute approximately 21% of Quakers worldwide (2012), according to the online Quaker Information Center.
Isaac Van Horne was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.
Thomas Penn was a son of William Penn, founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony that became the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Thomas Penn was born in Bristol, England after his father returned there in 1701 because of financial difficulties. Thomas Penn's mother was his father's second wife, Hannah Callowhill Penn (1671–1726), daughter of Thomas Callowhill.
When the Dutch and Swedes established colonies in the Delaware Valley of what is now Pennsylvania, in North America, they quickly imported African slaves for workers; the Dutch also transported them south from their colony of New Netherland. Slavery was documented in this area as early as 1639. William Penn and the colonists who settled Pennsylvania tolerated slavery, but the English Quakers and later German immigrants were among the first to speak out against it. Many colonial Methodists and Baptists also opposed it on religious grounds. During the Great Awakening of the late 18th century, their preachers urged slaveholders to free their slaves. High British tariffs in the 18th century discouraged the importation of additional slaves, and encouraged the use of white indentured servants and free labor.
The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was the first protest against enslavement of Africans made by a religious body in the Thirteen Colonies. Francis Daniel Pastorius authored the petition; he and three other Quakers living in Germantown, Pennsylvania signed it on behalf of the Germantown Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. Clearly a highly controversial document, Friends forwarded it up the hierarchical chain of their administrative structure--monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings--without either approving or rejecting it. The petition effectively disappeared for 150 years into Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's capacious archives; but upon rediscovery in 1844 by Philadelphia antiquarian Nathan Kite, latter-day abolitionists published it in 1844 in The Friend, in support of their antislavery agitation.
Elliott Cresson was an American philanthropist who gave money to a number of causes after a brief career in the mercantile business. He established the Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1848, and helped found and manage the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, today's Moore College of Art and Design. Cresson was a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and a strong supporter of the Philadelphia branch of the American Colonization Society, a group fighting slavery that relocated former slaves and free African Americans to colonies in Liberia. Cresson was called "the most belligerent Friend the Society ever had."
Events from the year 1793 in the United States.
Andrew Allen Harwood was an Admiral in the United States Navy.
Graceanna Lewis was an American naturalist, illustrator, and social reformer. An expert in the field of ornithology, Lewis is remembered as a pioneer female American scientist as well as an activist in the anti-slavery, temperance, and women's suffrage movements.
Stephen Duncan became a major planter and banker in Mississippi in the antebellum years, migrating there from his home state of Pennsylvania after getting a medical degree. He became the wealthiest cotton planter in the South prior to the American Civil War, and also invested in railroads and Midwest lands. He owned thousands of acres of land and more than 1,000 slaves in the 1850s, cultivating both cotton and sugar cane as commodity crops.
John Christian Wiltberger Sr. was an American silversmith, active in Philadelphia.
