Tag Archives ⇒ william penn

The Peaceable Kingdom Lost

June 30, 2026
· Martin Kelley

A sto­ry by Charles Fox of just a few of the mas­sacres of Indige­nous peo­ple in Penn­syl­va­nia in the late 1700s. While the Friends and Mora­vians often har­bored endan­gered Susque­han­nock, their paci­fism meant they were large­ly unable to stop the maraud­ing Scots-Irish who were doing the killing.

As one his­to­ri­an wrote:

The fron­tier did col­lapse in late 1763. The sur­prise was that the armed mob that descend­ed from the fron­tier into Lan­cast­er — and then to Philadel­phia in 1764 — were White fron­tiers­men. Every­body had expect­ed it would be Indians.

Even more trag­i­cal­ly, a few of the peo­ple who escaped the mobs end­ed up being slaugh­tered in lat­er attacks. Much of the colo­nial gov­ern­ment was­n’t Quak­er in the lat­ter half of the cen­tu­ry, includ­ing some of William Pen­n’s descen­dants. Still, Friends today can won­der whether the high-minded promis­es of eter­nal friend­ship between Quak­ers and Indige­nous Peo­ples were more hol­low and aspi­ra­tional than we’d like to admit. (Of course most of the Lenape and Susque­han­nock died from European-imported dis­eases, with every boat­load of set­tlers bring­ing more death to the orig­i­nal inhabitants.)

The ‘Peaceable Kingdom’ Lost: A Friendship Found  - ICT
The ‘Peace­able King­dom’ Lost: A Friend­ship Found  — ICT 

The Con­esto­ga mas­sacres in Penn­syl­va­nia more than 250 years ago for­ev­er changed Native-White relations

ICT ICT 

Unintentional Consequences, Intentional Repair

January 8, 2026
· Martin Kelley

I wrote the open­ing col­umn for the Jan­u­ary Friends Jour­nal, which looks at Indige­nous Peo­ples and Friends. As reg­u­lar read­ers of this blog already no doubt know, I’m a fan of local his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly contact-era and colo­nial his­to­ries and espe­cial­ly about rela­tions with the Indige­nous Lenape and the enslaved Africans.

The whole issue is real­ly pow­er­ful and I hope you find it as enlight­en­ing as I did.

Where I live, in one of the colonial-era Quak­er colonies of the Mid-Atlantic Unit­ed States, there has long been a benev­o­lent por­tray­al of Quak­ers’ rela­tions with the local Indige­nous Peo­ples. We are told that ear­ly Friend William Penn nego­ti­at­ed the Treaty of Shacka­max­on with Lenape leader Tama­nend, a moment memo­ri­al­ized by parks, stat­ues, and a famous paint­ing by Ben­jamin West. The great French philoso­pher Voltaire declared it “the only treaty nev­er sworn to and nev­er bro­ken.” The new set­tlers bought each plot of land from the local Lenape bands. Vio­lence in the first half-century of Quak­er gov­er­nance was rare; coop­er­a­tion and good will were the norm.

And yet: there is no fed­er­al­ly rec­og­nized Indige­nous Nation left in this for­mer Lenape ter­ri­to­ry. Every boat­load of Quak­ers that sailed up from Delaware Bay brought the threat of anoth­er round of dead­ly small­pox. Every creek dammed to pow­er a mill cut off the spawn­ing fish runs that stocked upland creeks. Every pig let loose from an Eng­lish farm­stead ate through near­by Lenape maize and squash plantings.

The documents of Quaker slavery

February 28, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Today Friends Jour­nal is fea­tur­ing two inter­views in two media on the man­u­mis­sion project out of Haver­ford Col­lege. As it hap­pens, I’m the inter­view­er on both!

For those of you turn­ing to the dic­tio­nary, man­u­mis­sions are the doc­u­ments promis­ing the free­dom of enslaved humans. Despite our pop­u­lar image, Quak­ers enslaved Africans for over a cen­tu­ry, start­ing with Quak­er on Bar­ba­dos in the 1660s. That island was the first fab­u­lous­ly suc­cess­ful British colony in the West­ern Hemi­sphere and that econ­o­my was built on sug­ar and slaves. Quak­er mis­sion­ar­ies con­vert­ed slave-owning White Bar­ba­di­ans.1

Bar­ba­dos became less friend­ly to Quak­ers in fol­low­ing decades (repres­sive laws, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters) and many moved to William Penn’s new colony in the 1680s, bring­ing their enslaved peo­ple and a Quak­er accep­tance of human bondage with them. Kather­ine Gerbner’s “Slav­ery in the Quak­er World” is a good place to start with this his­to­ry (and yes, I inter­viewed her too a few years ago).

Some Friends start­ed for­mal­ly writ­ing against slav­ery start­ing in 1688 but rich, slave-holding Friends (includ­ing William Penn) didn’t agree and the protests were shelved. It wasn’t until 1776 that Friends in Philadel­phia for­mal­ly acknowl­edged that human bondage and Quak­er prin­ci­ples were opposed. Slave-owning Friends had two choic­es: free those in their bondage or be dis­owned from the reli­gious society.

The man­u­mis­sion papers are the receipts of the for­mer Friends. Copies of the free­dom promis­es were sent up the chain of Quak­er bureau­cra­cy as proof and even­tu­al­ly end­ed up in the archives of Haver­ford College.

My first inter­view, “Inside Haverford’s Man­u­mis­sion Archives,” is with David Satten-López, the Haver­ford fel­low­ship stu­dent who dig­i­tized a por­tion of these records, and Mary Crauderu­eff, who heads Haverford’s Quak­er collections.

The sec­ond inter­view is a video con­ver­sa­tion with Avis Wan­da McClin­ton, a strong voice on remem­ber­ing the Quak­er his­to­ry of forced bondage.

I’m so glad we’re talk­ing about this trag­ic his­to­ry more and hap­py that folks like Avis, Mary, and David have let me be part of the conversation.

Just a moment...
Just a moment… 
www.friendsjournal.org www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org

William Penn on community

March 21, 2019
· Martin Kelley

I some­times like to high­light the com­ments that peo­ple leave here on the blog. A few days ago, Carl Abbott replied to a link to a Steven Davi­son post on com­mu­ni­ty as a tes­ti­mo­ny. He wrote:

William Pen­n’s intro­duc­tion to George Fox’s Jour­nal (1691) speaks to some­thing very like community:

“Besides these gen­er­al doc­trines, as the larg­er branch­es, there sprang forth sev­er­al par­tic­u­lar doc­trines, that did exem­pli­fy and far­ther explain the truth and effi­ca­cy of the gen­er­al doc­trine before observed, in their lives and exam­ples: as,

Com­mu­nion and lov­ing one anoth­er. This is anot­ed mark in the mouth of all sorts of peo­ple con­cern­ing them: They will meet, they will help and stick one to anoth­er. Whence it is com­mon to hear some say: Look how the Quak­ers love and take care of one anoth­er. Oth­ers, less mod­er­ate, will say: The Quak­ers live none but them­selves: and if lov­ing one anoth­er. and hav­ing an inti­mate com­mu­nion in reli­gion, and con­stant care to meet to wor­ship God, and help one anoth­er, be any mark of prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty, they had it, blessed be the Lord in ample manner.” 

This cer­tain­ly sounds like com­mu­ni­ty to me.

The Doctrine of Discovery, white guilt, and Friends

November 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er starts with “it’s com­pli­cat­ed” and goes on from there. A pas­sage I find par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is his expla­na­tion of why look­ing at large-scale state-level atroc­i­ties like the steal­ing of native land or the kid­nap­ping of mil­lions of Africans is not just some­thing to be done out of guilt:

Whether you believe in an intel­li­gent Satan (along the lines of Peter Wag­n­er’s ideas) or a more imper­son­al mech­a­nism of demon­ic evil (Wal­ter Wink), we should­n’t pre­tend that such nodes just go away. Their evil per­sists. The basis for apol­o­gy and repen­tance is not white guilt or shame or any form of self-flagellation. Instead, it is to con­duct spir­i­tu­al war­fare against the demons of racism and oppres­sion and false wit­ness, to declare them off-limits in the land that we now share, so that we can con­duct our future stew­ard­ship — and make our pub­lic invest­ments— in free­dom and mutu­al regard. 

I’m drawn to the old notion of “The Tempter” as a force that leads us to do what’s per­son­al­ly reward­ing rather than moral­ly just. I think it explains a lot of inter­nal strug­gles I’ve faced, even in sim­ple wit­ness­es. As Johan says, these mas­sive injus­tices can’t just be undone but they need to be rec­og­nized for the immen­si­ty of their scale. I’ve also seen this weird way in which pro­gres­sive whites can blithe­ly dis­re­gard Native Amer­i­can per­spec­tives on these issues. Lis­ten­ing more and wait­ing for com­pli­cat­ed answers seems essen­tial in my opinion.

Anoth­er good deep-dive for Friends inter­est­ed in this is Bet­sy Caz­den’s Friends Jour­nal 2006 arti­cle, Quak­er Mon­ey, Old Mon­ey, and White Priv­i­lege. It’s one I turn to every so often to remind myself of some of our monied Quak­er norms. Johan gives a pass to William Penn but I think it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that his colo­nial ambi­tions were deeply enmeshed in at least three dif­fer­ent wars and con­ve­nient­ly served the polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions of two empires, the per­fect storm of an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a group of paci­fist idealists.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​n​a​t​i​v​e​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​-​i​t​s​.​h​tml

William Penn: commemorations and curios

July 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The 300th anniver­sary of William Penn’s death is close at hand and archivists in the British Quak­er library share a post about their col­lec­tion of Penn curios:

The archival mate­r­i­al in the Library relat­ing to William Penn includes prop­er­ty deeds relat­ing to land in Penn­syl­va­nia, such as the one pic­tured below. There are also let­ters from William Penn amongst oth­er people’s papers. One notable exam­ple, dat­ed 13th of 11th month 1690 (13 Jan­u­ary 1691, in the mod­ern cal­en­dar), is a let­ter from him to Mar­garet Fox, for­mer­ly Mar­garet Fell, telling her of the death of her hus­band, George Fox.

William Penn: com­mem­o­ra­tions and curios

It sounds like there have been lots of momen­tos made from the elm tree under which William Penn is said to have signed a treaty with the Lenape in 1683. The Penn Treaty Park muse­um has stir­ring accounts of the storm that tore the tree from its roots in 1810. There were so many rel­ic hunters hack­ing off pieces of the fall­en tree that the own­ers of the prop­er­ty own­ers hired a guard. Their solu­tion was the obvi­ous cap­i­tal­ist one: chop the remain­der up and sell it.

Accord­ing to an arti­cle on the Haver­ford Col­lege site, cut­tings of the orig­i­nal tree were tak­en in its life­time and trees have been prop­a­gat­ed from its lin­eage for a few gen­er­a­tions now. Haver­ford recent­ly plant­ed a “great grand­child” of the orig­i­nal treaty elm on its cam­pus to replace a fall­en grand­child. New­town Meet­ing in near­by Bucks Coun­ty has a great great grand­child.

The idea of Quak­er relics and trees imbued with spe­cial prop­er­ties because of a lin­eage of place­ment does­n’t real­ly jive very well with many Friends’ ideas of the Quak­er tes­ti­monies. But I’m glad that the treaty is remem­bered. The tree had served as a sort of memo­r­i­al; with its demise, a group came togeth­er to more prop­er­ly remem­ber the loca­tion and com­mem­o­rate the treaty.

March 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The hum­ble, meek, mer­ci­ful, just, pious, and devout souls are every­where of one reli­gion; and when death has tak­en off the mask they will know one anoth­er, though the divers liv­er­ies they wear here makes them strangers. This world is a form; our bod­ies are forms; and no vis­i­ble acts of devo­tion can be with­out forms. But yet the less form in reli­gion the bet­ter, since God is a Spir­it; for the more men­tal our wor­ship, the more ade­quate to the nature of God; the more silent, the more suit­able to the lan­guage of a Spirit.

—William Penn