Lessons from My Quaker Ancestors and the People They Enslaved

First page of the testimony of Amy Reckless, enslaved by Robert Johnston of Salem, given to Isaac Barton of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1826. Photo courtesy of the author.

For the past year I have been studying the history of slavery and abolition in my family. Here are some of the stories I encountered and what I learned from them.

Some of these events and the language describing them will be unpleasant. I have tried to read and report without judging. I do not feel guilt about my ancestors’ bad behavior, nor do I take credit for their good behavior. I try to feel compassion for everyone involved.

There were many captive workers and Quaker enslavers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; this is the eastern side of Chesapeake Bay. It is farmland suitable for tobacco plantations. More than 131 people were enslaved by 16 of my Quaker grandparents who lived there between 1669 and 1780. (Sources for the data described here are in my report “Slavery in My Family,” online at digitalcollections.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/node/498768.)

For example, 13 captive workers were in the inventory of the estate of William Troth when he died in 1710. He and Isabel Harrison were my seven-times-great-grandparents and they lived near Easton, Maryland. They were Quakers, as were all the enslavers and abolitionists in this article.

I do not know more about these 13 enslaved people. Were they of African or Indigenous heritage? Under what conditions were they living? What happened to them? Like footprints in the sand, the records only hint at what went before.

Twenty-four people were enslaved by William and Isabel’s son Henry Troth and his wife, Elizabeth Johns, at the time of Henry’s death in 1729.

Forty-three people were enslaved by Elizabeth’s parents, Elizabeth Kinsey and Richard Johns, when Richard died in 1717. These captive workers represented the largest item in the inventory of his estate: they were valued at £1,143, which was 53 percent of the total value.

Slavery was more common in my family than I knew. In total, I found over 1,550 people enslaved by 246 of my close relatives—counting Quaker and non-Quaker grandparents, uncles, aunts, and first cousins with their spouses. Of the 246 relatives who held people in bondage, 68 freed at least some of them. Sixty-seven relatives were active in the movement to end slavery. As the project went on, I felt a growing obligation to be a voice for these people whose stories were almost lost.

Market House in the town square of Easton, Maryland. Market Days were held every week, and sometimes slave sales were held there. Photo from commons.wikimedia.org.

I was surprised by how common slavery was among Friends in general. A sample of the wills of 50 Quakers in the Eastern Shore of Maryland, between 1659 and 1750, showed that 21 of them were enslavers. In Philadelphia, of 13 Quaker leaders whose careers ended between 1742 and 1753, ten held people in bondage.

Continuing the stories of my Quaker ancestors on the Eastern Shore, in 1669 William Berry’s second wife, Margaret Marsh Preston, insisted on a prenuptial agreement. Among other things, she asked for “the little Negro Girl called Sarah, born in Richard Preston’s house, valued to ten pounds sterling. If the said Girl should die, the said William Berry to make the same good to the said Margaret by another Negro or the value.”

Two people were freed in William’s will in 1685, although this was “at the discretion of his wife.” Was Sarah freed? She would have been in her 20s.

Enslaved people were owned by William’s son James Berry Sr., who married Elizabeth Pitt, and other captives were owned by their son James Jr., who married Sarah Skillington. I don’t have more details.

And then, John Woolman brought change. In the words of historian Kenneth Carroll:

When John Woolman traveled on foot through the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in the late spring of 1766, he seemed almost an “embodied conscience.” His undyed clothes stemmed from his testimony against the slave labor used in producing dyes, and his journey on foot expressed his intention to put aside comfort and ease (and to have a sense of the “condition” of the Negro slaves working in the fields along the dusty roads). He traveled from slaveowner to slaveowner in the Quaker community, calling upon Friends to free themselves from the love of comfort, ease, and selfish profit which enabled them to hold their fellow man in bondage.

James Berry III married Elizabeth Powell in 1758. Her parents, Mary Sherwood and Daniel Powell, owned 40 people when Daniel died. In 1768, eight people were freed by James, who was the clerk of Maryland Yearly Meeting. His brothers, Joseph and Benjamin, also freed enslaved people at that time.

Elizabeth’s sister Sarah Powell was 17 when she freed Jenny, Judith, Minta, and Rose. That was in 1770. Two years later, Sarah married Benjamin Parvin, and, five years after that, he freed Adam, Eve, Isaac, Phill, and Pegg. Benjamin had an interesting history: he accompanied John Woolman on his journey to Wyalusing, a Lenape village, in 1763. After listening to Woolman speak, Papunhank, the Lenape leader, famously said, “I love to feel where words come from.”

Mary Bonsall was James Berry’s third wife. Both of them were designated ministers in their meetings and active abolitionists. In 1795, Mary Berry and Anne Emlen Mifflin became the first women to petition a legislature on the subject of slavery. They warned the legislators that the people held in bondage “have, we apprehend, with their uplifted cries, pierced the very Court of Heaven from whence a decree may issue from him who ever remains the refuge for the oppressed, that retribution for these things shall be made.”

Anne Berry, a daughter of Elizabeth Powell and James Berry III, married Samuel Troth, a grandson of Elizabeth Johns and Henry Troth. In 1797, Samuel was named by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to a committee to draft a message to the U.S. Congress urging them to end slavery. Samuel and Anne’s son Henry Troth was treasurer of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society for 13 years, and he also served as a manager of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society (which helped establish the independent nation of Liberia in West Africa). This Henry Troth and his wife, Henrietta Henri, were my three-times-great-grandparents.

Wenlock Christison Defying the Court by Frederick Coffay Yohn, 1930. Photo from commons.wikimedia.org.

Change came gradually to Friends. When they started taking a stand against slavery, they simply declared that members could no longer buy or sell people. Later, Friends decided not to allow enslavers to be appointed as elders in their meetings. Then they refused to accept financial contributions from enslavers. These steps were taken before Friends finally declared they would disown any member holding another person captive. This took most of the eighteenth century. Participation in meeting for worship by people of African descent came later. Gradual change happened in part because there were people calling for immediate and total change. Even gradual steps may have seemed radical at the time.

People on all sides of the slavery issue used religion to justify their actions. Some of my relatives behaved with extreme cruelty toward other people while supporting the Golden Rule, the gospel of love, and the presence of God in every person. Their religion did not protect them from bad behavior.

Nor were they protected by their political beliefs: many of them were passionately committed to liberty and human rights for all.

Consider Wenlock Christison, one of 40 Quaker missionaries who went to New England between 1656 and 1661 to preach in the streets, knowing they would be punished as heretics. Wenlock was beaten and robbed, whipped and placed in stocks, and jailed and banished on pain of death if he returned. He did return and was sentenced, but, while waiting to be hanged, Charles II put a stop to the Massachusetts policy of executing people for being Quakers. After his escape, Wenlock lived in Barbados and then moved to Maryland’s Eastern Shore. There he was warmly received by Friends. They gave him land, and he married Elizabeth Gary Harwood, my eight-times-great-aunt.

Wenlock arrived in Maryland with Ned, Toby, and Jack: enslaved men he had agreed to sell for their owner, a Quaker in Barbados. But Wenlock never sent the money. After he died in 1679, a court ordered his heirs to pay the heirs of the owner 10,000 pounds of tobacco “for the price and use of the negroes,” plus court costs. I don’t know if Wenlock kept the men, or sold them and kept the money.

The ability to behave in contradictory ways is common among humans: we learn readily, and we fool ourselves readily. It sometimes worries me that I, too, may be unaware of the ways I am adjusting my convictions to the needs of my life.

I see a positive side to this flexibility in the relation between faith and the rest of our behavior. We have all known people living good lives while holding vastly different religious beliefs. We see a variety of Quaker faiths accompanying our traditional practices as we look around the room during worship, and as we look at Friends around the world and back through history.

As individuals, we feel a direct connection between our faith and practice, but it doesn’t have to be the same connection for all of us. We can unite in the practices, accommodating our differences by responding to where words come from, rather than reacting to the particulars on which we differ. That is a lesson I embrace.

Os Cresson

Os Cresson is a member of Iowa City (Iowa) Meeting. He published “Radical Love in the Meetinghouse: Uniting as Friends in Diverse Meetings” in the December 2021 Friends Journal. His present article is based on “Slavery in My Family,” a report posted in the digital collection of Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. Contact: oscresson1@gmail.com.

2 thoughts on “Lessons from My Quaker Ancestors and the People They Enslaved

  1. I would like to thank the art editors of Friends Journal for their use of color and illustrations to draw the reader into my article. You truly are artists!
    For more about the people mentioned in this article, and the sources of the information, you might like to read Chapter 11 (pages 93–103) in my report, Slavery in My Family, online at https://digitalcollections.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/node/498768 . For the story of Amy Hester Reckless, whose testimony is pictured in the article, above, see Chapter 9 (pp. 75–79), and for Anne Emlen Mifflin who petitioned the Maryland legislature along with Mary Bonsall Berry, see Chapter 12 (pp. 105–108). It has been a privilege to learn a bit about the lives of all these people.
    Peace,
    Os Cresson

  2. Good to read this article. 60 years ago we were at Earlham, I have tried to do some genealogy but Smith leads down some blind alleys and I haven’t had the tenacity that is apparent in your search.

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