Quakers

Patience Wright: A Revolutionary NY Artist in England

July 10, 2026 by Chris Kretz Leave a Comment

The American Revolution was not only fought militarily in the colonies, artists also played an integral role. In The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2025) Dr. Zara Anishanslin highlights the intertwined lives of three of them: Robert Edge Pine, Prince Demah and Patience Wright.

Of particular interest to New Yorkers, Wright was born a Quaker (and a relative of the Townsend family) in Oyster Bay, Nassau County, on Long Island. She had a talent for sculpting and her medium was the wax figure. Her museum in the city of New York was a popular attraction, featuring lifelike replicas of notable figures. [Read more…] about Patience Wright: A Revolutionary NY Artist in England

Non-Violent Resistance During the American Revolution

October 15, 2025 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The Fort Plain Museum & Historical Park has announced the winner of their inaugural James Kirby Martin Book Prize, Jane E. Calvert’s Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson (Oxford Univ. Press, 2024). The Prize is given in honor of Martin, an 18th century historian and museum supporter who died unexpectedly this year. Martin’s posthumously published final book, also on the American Revolution, has also just been released.

Quaker pacifist John Dickinson (1732-1808) of Pennsylvania and Delaware, one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, was an important early leader of the resistance to British rule before the outbreak of the American revolution and among the first to advocate civil disobedience as a form of protest. [Read more…] about Non-Violent Resistance During the American Revolution

The Expulsion of Deborah Moody

June 16, 2025 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

New England was a male-dominated Puritan society in which women could not vote, own property or hold a post in religious or governmental bodies. Men were inferior to God and women lesser than men. But the lived experience varied according to background and education.

Despite restrictions, some women did make themselves heard and challenged communal norms. Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) and Deborah Moody (1586-1659) battled for the right to speak out. Demanding inclusive debate, they were accused of undermining the authority of the Colony’s patriarchal structure. [Read more…] about The Expulsion of Deborah Moody

Early Saratoga County Religious Communities: Some History

June 6, 2025 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

Throughout Saratoga County’s long history, many religious and spiritual communities have called our home their home, with the land even being sacred to some. This article will highlight the founding of several of Saratoga County’s religious communities through the 19th century, with a focus on Saratoga Springs.

Today, diverse people of faith have joined those long-established denominations to call Saratoga home, including Jewish communities, several Indigenous Cultural Revival Movements, and a Mosque, Masjid Al-Arqam in Halfmoon. All of them play important roles in the Saratoga Community. [Read more…] about Early Saratoga County Religious Communities: Some History

Cherries in America & The Rise and Fall of Cherry Street, Manhattan

May 29, 2025 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

The Queens-bound F train platform of Delancey and Essex Street Station features three cherry tree murals as well as several smaller cherry mosaics. Created in 2004 by the Shanghai-born and New York City-based sculptor Ming Fay, “Delancey Orchard” glass mosaic is an allusion to the farm land that once belonged to a Loyalist family.

Étienne De Lancy was a French Huguenot refugee from Caen; his wife Anne descended from the prominent Dutch-American Van Cortlandt family. In the course of his career their eldest son James De Lancey (born in 1703) served as Chief Justice, Lieutenant Governor and acting Colonial Governor of the Province of New York. [Read more…] about Cherries in America & The Rise and Fall of Cherry Street, Manhattan

Slavery & Abolition Activism at the Jan Van Hoesen House

January 21, 2025 by Editorial Staff 2 Comments

Jan Van Hoesen House on Route 66, north of the City of Hudson, NY and just east of Claverack Creek in Columbia County, is a rare surviving house characteristic of the Upper Hudson Valley in the first half of the 1700s.

As both a site of enslavement and a site of freedom, the house is arguably one of the most significant historic sites in Columbia County.
[Read more…] about Slavery & Abolition Activism at the Jan Van Hoesen House

Hopper-Gibbons House: A Relic of Manhattan’s Underground Railroad

October 18, 2024 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

The Hopper-Gibbons House at 339 West 29th Street was built in 1846-47, and is one of the last extant documented Underground Railroad site in Manhattan. Abigail Hopper Gibbons (1801-1893) and James Sloan Gibbons (1810-1892) purchased the house in 1852.

James was a cousin of Horace Greeley and the writer of the lyrics to the Civil War call to arms, “Three Hundred Thousand More.” A financial editor for the New York Evening Post he later served briefly as an editor of the Anti-Slavery Standard. Abigail was the daughter of noted abolitionist and prison reform advocate Isaac Hooper (1771-1852; his home still stands in the East Village), who directly confronted slave kidnappers. [Read more…] about Hopper-Gibbons House: A Relic of Manhattan’s Underground Railroad

A Quaker Legacy: Religious Freedom, Commerce & Compassion

September 8, 2024 by Jaap Harskamp 3 Comments

During the early days of settlement, economics in New Netherland trumped religion or identity. Pragmatism and tolerance were essential conditions of coexisting in a multi-national and multi-lingual colony, not abstract ideals. The Dutch Reformed Church may have been the official religion, but citizens were free to worship other teachings.

A substantial population of Huguenots, Quakers and Calvinists settled along the Hudson River. They were followed by Jewish immigrants. New England did not provide such leniency. Plymouth Pilgrims and the Massachusetts Bay Puritans were separate communities. [Read more…] about A Quaker Legacy: Religious Freedom, Commerce & Compassion

Abolitionist Levi Coffin: Action, Not Words

August 26, 2024 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Levi Coffin was a legendary figure in the abolition movement who believed that action was more important than words in that struggle. Born in New Garden, North Carolina, on October 28, 1798, Coffin was raised in an anti-slavery Quaker family who immigrated to Indiana near the border with Ohio in 1826 to avoid slaveholders’ increasing persecution of Quakers. [Read more…] about Abolitionist Levi Coffin: Action, Not Words

Itinerant Portrait Painter Asahel Lynde Powers’ Legacy

July 10, 2024 by Helen Allen Nerska 4 Comments

In 1975 Virginia Mason Burdick and Katherine Lochridge prepared an exhibit of 52 portraits by early self-taught itinerant portrait painters in the Champlain Valley.

Using the advice of local historians and hunting down paintings in private homes, it took three years of knocking on the doors of 35 friendly homes and eleven museums, pouring over old newspapers, letters, genealogies and gravestones “to solve the mystery of the artist or the sitter.” [Read more…] about Itinerant Portrait Painter Asahel Lynde Powers’ Legacy

Politics, Printers, Bibles & Founding Fathers

May 1, 2024 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

In 1631 Charles I summoned his Royal printers Robert Barker and Martin Lucas to court after it was discovered that their reprint of the King James Bible contained a typographical mistake by leaving out the word “not” from the seventh commandment. In between exhortations that “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not steal,” readers are instructed that “thou shalt commit adultery.” [Read more…] about Politics, Printers, Bibles & Founding Fathers

Prisoners of Congress: Philadelphia’s Quakers in Exile, 1777-1778

December 17, 2023 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

In 1777, Congress labeled Quakers who would not take up arms in support of the War of Independence as “the most Dangerous Enemies America knows” and ordered Pennsylvania and Delaware to apprehend them.

In response, Keystone State officials sent twenty men ― seventeen of whom were Quakers ― into exile, banishing them to Virginia, where they were held for a year. [Read more…] about Prisoners of Congress: Philadelphia’s Quakers in Exile, 1777-1778

Social and Religious Movements in Central New York

November 17, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

Central New York communities that flourished with canal-related development and rail connections throughout the 19th century also became hotbeds for religious and social movements of the early 1800s as the area’s population rapidly grew.

Religious freedom granted by the United States Bill of Rights combined with rapid societal and technological changes experienced by Americans living through western expansion fueled an American spiritual movement that was exemplified in the newly opened frontier of New York. [Read more…] about Social and Religious Movements in Central New York

Anna Elizabeth Dickinson: ‘America’s Civil War Joan of Arc’

September 21, 2023 by Helen Allen Nerska 1 Comment

On a cold, snowy January evening in 1874, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson became one of the first women of national prominence to speak on women’s suffrage in Clinton County, NY. Those gathering to hear her at the Palmer Hall, located upstairs at 60 Margaret Street in downtown Plattsburgh, were described as the most intellectual and cultivated in the community.

The crowd that night would have known her reputation. [Read more…] about Anna Elizabeth Dickinson: ‘America’s Civil War Joan of Arc’

Jehudi Ashmun: A Founder & Historian of Liberia

September 14, 2023 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Born and raised in the town of Champlain, Clinton County, NY, Jehudi Ashmun (1794 – 1828) was a religious leader and social reformer who helped lead efforts by the American Colonization Society to “repatriate” African Americans to a colony in West Africa.

The organization, formed in 1816 by Quakers and slaveholders, founded the colony of Liberia as a place to resettle free people of color from the United States, believing in part that Black people would face better chances for freedom and prosperity in Africa than in the United States. [Read more…] about Jehudi Ashmun: A Founder & Historian of Liberia

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