George Fox was the founder and central figure of Quakerism. Born in 1624 in a tiny town in the central part of England, he had an undistinguished background. Fox obtained a little education and then was apprenticed to a shoemaker who also kept sheep and cattle. Often Fox was left alone in the fields with the animals; at such times, he apparently meditated on the world and the people in the countryside around Fenny Drayton. He seemed to enjoy that solitude, for, in his own words, he appeared “of another frame of mind than the rest of his brethren, being more religious, inward, still, solid, and observing beyond his years.” To this sensitive youth the world seemed baffling, and he was unsuccessful in his attempts to bring order out of the chaos in his mind. His friends advised him to marry or to engage in the singing of psalms to solve his problems. But those suggested solutions were not for him. Instead he sought help from professors and ministers, discovering that the professors did not practice what they preached and that the ministers were actually “empty, hollow casks.” He was a lonely, troubled, depressed young man. Then something happened in 1648, when he was twenty-four. He described that “something” in unforgettable language: And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do; then, oh then I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition,” and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. For years he had traveled in a spiritual desert without any water to slake his thirst; now he had discovered a spiritual oasis with a perpetual source of water. Fox had made a great discovery, that God lives and talks directly to the people of the present as he did to the prophets in the past. He is available to anyone, anywhere, at any time, and on any topic when people are ready to speak with the Divine. He is a Living Presence, a Continuing Illumination. This revelation came not from books or sermons but from direct experience. In Fox’s words: “This I knew experimentally.” (Today we might substitute the word “experientially.”) Fox knew, too, that this remarkable discovery was something that should be shared. So he felt impelled to tell others that his joy might be theirs also. Consequently, he set off on his travels. His journey eventually took him to every part of England, to what is now the Netherlands and Germany, to Barbados and Jamaica, and to the American colonies. Everywhere he went, he found fellow seekers who were eager to hear him speak and often to join with others in a new movement. Most of these people were common folk, but a few were well-educated men, several of them from prominent families. Particularly outstanding were Isaac Penington, Robert Barclay, and William Penn. Penington’s father had been the lord mayor of London and a friend of John Locke and John Milton; Isaac became the literary and mystical interpreter of the movement. Robert Barclay, born in Scotland and educated by both Calvinists and Catholics, became a prominent minister, the best-known Quaker theologian, a defender of religious freedom, and the governor of the colony of New Jersey (although in absentia). William Penn, however, became the most famous of those early leaders. The son of an admiral, he joined the Quaker movement at an early age. A many-sided individual, he founded the proprietary colony of Pennsylvania, championed civil rights (as in the famous Penn-Meade trial), formulated a plan for a federation of Europe (225 years ahead of the League of Nations), became a friend of the Native Americans, and was a city planner, a prison reformer, an educator, and a religious essayist (as in his Fruits of Solitude, No Cross, No Crown, and other writings). And there were prominent women, too, such as Elizabeth Hooton‚ the first “recorded minister” and Margaret Fell Fox, whose home at Swarthmore in England became the headquarters of the Quaker world of that day for traveling ministers. The message that those and other Friends proclaimed was not new. Theirs was an attempt to recover the vitality and authenticity of the early Christians. At its core was Friends’ certainty that God does not dwell in temples but in people’s hearts. To them it was clear that everyone is endowed at birth with an Inner Light. We can deny this divinity within us as well as outside us. We can ignore it. We can minimize it. But it is always there, ready to be released. And that Light, Seed, or aspect of the Divine is present in everyone, regardless of age, sex, race, nationality, or economic or social status. The messages of Fox and others were filled with hope because of the transforming power of God. But they did not overlook the evil in people and in the world. In fact, they talked much of the suffering, sin, and imperfections of human beings. But early Friends believed that love could triumph. As Fox wrote in one of his most memorable passages: I saw also there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love which flowed over the ocean of darkness. In many ways, this sounds like a simple view of religion and of life. But it was—and is—an explosive, revolutionary, demanding doctrine, one that proved extremely difficult to live out in everyday practice. But the early Quakers were often successful in doing so. As Fox said, “The lives and conversations of Friends did preach.” Many of them practiced what they preached, and preached what they practiced. And although they were interested primarily in the transformation of individuals, many of them were likewise interested in the transformation of society. Gradually, a number of “concerns” arose out of early Friends’ belief in the importance of all human beings. Among them were concerns for people in prisons, civil liberties and civil rights, peace, and, eventually, friendly relations with Native Americans and freedom for enslaved Africans. Simple as all this may sound today, such views ran counter to the accepted beliefs of the time, and Quakers were reviled, denounced, and imprisoned for what they believed and practiced. Here are some examples of the differences between the prevailing beliefs and the Quaker view: Whereas many people declared the doctrine of human depravity, early Friends proclaimed the possibility of perfection or wholeness by everyone. Whereas many people declared the doctrine of the elect, early Friends declared that all men, women, and children were elect. Whereas many people believed that revelations were solely or primarily limited to the prophets of the past, early Friends said that they were still occurring and that everyone could have revelations from God. Whereas many people believed in the supremacy of the Church or the Bible, early Friends believed in the supremacy of experience. Whereas many people upheld the sacraments as essential aspects of Christianity, early Friends considered them substitutes for the all-important sacrament of a life well lived. Whereas many people relied on the preaching of a single individual (and almost always a man) in their services, early Friends maintained that all worshippers, including women and children, were potential ministers. Whereas many churches utilized stained-glass windows, an altar, and music to promote worship, early Friends considered these objects deterrents to true worship, speaking instead in group silence with the Divine. Patterning their lives after those of the early Christian disciples, early Friends formed tiny fellowships, caring communities, and small societies. At the center of such communities was the worship of the group in expectant silence‚ usually twice a week. That practice constituted a radical religious departure in seventeenth-century England‚ and it still does. In such services ministers were not abolished; it was the laity that was eradicated. Because of the centrality of community, men and women married themselves in a meeting for worship after being “cleared” by other members of the group. Friends eventually developed a unique way of conducting their business affairs‚ in the form of so-called meetings for worship with attention to business. Held on a conveyor belt of silence, these meetings assembled Friends to seek Divine Guidance in their temporal affairs. The presiding officer was not an official with a gavel who took charge; he or she was instead a listener for the “sense of the meeting,” equipped only with a quill pen. Instead of votes being taken, resulting in a gloating majority and a disgruntled minority, an attempt was made to reach agreement by everyone. It was a slow procedure, sometimes frustrating, but one calculated to foster unity rather than division. It is important to note that whereas other sects disappeared, the Quaker movement survived, because it had methods of organizing itself as well as spreading a dynamic message. No one has fully explained how the early Quakers developed such forward-looking methods. Certainly some were derived from the history of early Christianity and some adapted from the practices of various sects that rose about the same time as Quakerism. Many Friends today explain the development of such measures as based on uncanny intuition; probably those early Quakers would have referred to them as Divinely inspired.

Another amazing aspect of early Quakerism is its emphasis on education. Imagine a small group of people, most of them illiterate, starting schools at a time when education was considered a benefit exclusive to the rich and powerful. Yet the Quakers did just that.

The current essay sketches only in thin pencil lines the broad outlines of the Quaker education movement. For those interested in more details, three accounts are recommended. One is Howard Brinton’s Quaker Education in Theory and Practice. Then there are the two comprehensive chapters on Quaker schools in Elbert Russell’s definitive book The History of Quakerism. The third volume is Quakers and Education: As Seen in Their Schools in England, written in the 1950s by W. A. C. Stewart, a non-Friend, as a doctoral dissertation.

Undoubtedly there were many factors that contributed to the early interest of seventeenth-century Quakers in education. But much of the credit goes to George Fox. About twenty years after he had begun to preach, he advised Friends to set up two schools‚ one for boys and one for girls. The fact that he even considered a school for girls was incredible for the time. Then, a few years later, Friends introduced coeducational schools, an even more radical innovation.

The idea of coeducational schools caught on immediately, and by 1671 there were fifteen boarding schools in existence run by Friends. Some of these institutions were run initially by individual Quakers, but within a short time the yearly meeting recommended that monthly or quarterly meetings found schools, and this practice was soon established.

Realizing the need for better prepared teachers, the yearly meeting then established a training school in 1697.

A different and even more radical approach to education was undertaken in 1702 by John Bellers, a Friend who is sometimes referred to as the father of socialism. His scheme was for a trade or manual labor school, conceived as a part of a much larger plan to reduce unemployment, teach young men needed skills, and shift the population of England into underpopulated areas. Unfortunately, that experiment was short-lived.

Friends were aware of the poorer members among them who could not afford to send their children to the new boarding schools. So, to address that situation, London Friends established a special school for the children of poor Quakers in 1674. In the light of our thinking today, the establishment of such a school was a form of discrimination, but it was a move forward in the seventeenth century.

There are several plausible explanations to why Friends in that day were so forward-looking in regard to education.

One is that George Fox felt that his lack of schooling had been a detriment in his life and hoped that young Quakers could have access to schools. Another explanation is that some of the best-educated leaders of the society who had had university training before they became Quakers were well aware, particularly toward the end of the century, that no nonconformists such as Friends could enter Oxford or Cambridge, because they were not members of the Church of England (a rule that existed until 1871).

But the most important reason seems to be that a group that had no trained clergy and depended on its rank and file to serve as ministers needed educated adherents. And because Quakerism was a special way of life, Quakers needed schools in which boys and girls could be educated not to live in the world that was, but in the world Friends hoped to help create. A distinct way of life demanded a distinct type of education.

Based on that belief, Quakers established schools wherever they lived. In addition to the schools in England, Quaker educational institutions were founded early Ireland, Barbados, and the American colonies. Wherever Friends moved, they built meeting houses‚ and then, nearby, schoolhouses.

In 1682 Philadelphia was founded, and Friends soon established schools there. Research done by Henry Cadbury, one of the foremost Quaker historians, has revealed that there were at least three Quakers in the Philadelphia area who started their own schools before 1689.

Then, in that year, local Quakers started schools under the care of their monthly meetings. There were several such small institutions, and Friends Select School in Philadelphia claims to be the modern descendant of those schools. In 1689 the William Penn Charter School was started under a grant from its namesake, the famous governor of Pennsylvania.

It is also interesting to reflect on the fact that Francis Daniel Pastorius, best known as the man who helped persuade Friends very early in their history to speak out against slavery, was a schoolmaster.

But there were other schools in the Philadelphia vicinity. Perhaps the earliest was in Abington. A meeting was started there in 1683 and a school a few years later. In 1697, John Barnes, a Quaker landowner, gave the Abington meeting 120 acres on which to build a meeting house and a school‚ land on which the Abington School still stands in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania.

Naturally, one may ask what was distinctive about early Friends’ educational institutions. In what ways were they Friends schools?

First and foremost, the meeting for worship was considered the heart of the school. Nearly all the speaking in those meetings was done by the recorded ministers and elders. But early Friends schools unfortunately gave their students no preparation for this unique form of worship, and undoubtedly many of the messages were not particularly appealing to the boys and girls of that day. Certainly, however, some spoke to the condition of the students, and many boys and girls undoubtedly found the silent worship helpful in their lives.

The basic textbook in those early schools was the Bible, supplemented later by some of the many tracts written by Friends and the journals or spiritual diaries written by Quakers.

Art, music, and drama were nonexistent in the curriculum, as Friends in that approximately 250-year period frowned on those aspects of life and education.

Friends insisted rather that their schools stress practical subjects, including the study of science and nature. Quaker schools consequently became pioneers in those fields and have remained so to this day. George Fox himself stressed the teaching of science and other practical subjects, calling for an education in “whatsoever things were civil and useful in the creation.” William Penn also endorsed that same approach, saying:

The world is certainly a great and stately volume of natural things. . . . But, alas! how very few leaves of it do we seriously turn over. This ought to be the subject of the education of our youth . . . we are in pain to make them scholars but not men! To talk rather than to know. . . . We press their memory too soon . . . and load them with words and rules; to know grammar and rhetoric, and a strange tongue or two that it is ten to one they may never be useful to them, leaving their natural genius to mechanical and physical or natural knowledge uncultivated and neglected, which would be of exceeding use and pleasure to them through the whole course of their lives.

Commenting on the primacy of science education in Friends schools, W. A. C. Stevens stated that “Quakerism found scientific study satisfying because it was empirical, direct, and actual. But behind all that, it had meaning only in relation to the revelation of divine theology.”

Latin, Greek, and sometimes Hebrew were also taught, probably because of their relationship to the Bible and Christian history. But the yearly meeting also urged the administrators of Friends schools to incorporate the teaching of French, Danish, and Low Dutch, presumably so that students could travel later to those countries to promote the spread of Quakerism.

Because the existing textbooks were often deemed unsatisfactory, Friends began to write their own. Even Fox assisted Hookes as a collaborator on at least three volumes: A Primer and Catechism for Children, Plain Directions for Reading and Writing True English, and Instructions for Right Spelling‚ all produced in the 1670s.

Book learning was combined with physical labor, as Friends found no task degrading‚ a tradition that was resumed in Quaker institutions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

There was some physical punishment at early Friends schools but not as much as in other institutions of that time. Quakers had not yet realized that there are other ways of dealing with recalcitrant boys and girls and had not yet begun to explore how their testimony against violence applied to the education of children.

Life in those schools was spartan, and the students wore the plain clothes that had come to be identified with the Quaker testimony of plainness (later called “simplicity”), even though the original testimony was warped when the plain clothes of the earliest times became a kind of habit over a long period.

Many contemporary Friends possess a tendency to idealize the first-century Quakers, attributing to them characteristics they wish they had developed instead of recognizing their faults as well as their accomplishments. Despite their weaknesses, many of the early Friends were in fact remarkable people, and they developed a way of life that we would do well today to emulate.

Among the many fields in which those daring, caring, innovative early Quakers pioneered was education‚ and their work continues in many places to this day.

Once English Friends started to establish schools, the Quaker education movement gathered momentum, and in the period between 1799 and 1840, several educational institutions were founded. Some of these were planned for the lower levels of learning and were primarily day schools. But a few were boarding schools for more advanced instruction. Many of the Friends schools founded in England at this time were still only for the children of affluent Quaker parents, but a few, like Ackworth, were intended for the children of Friends with less means. There were even schools established for the children of disowned Friends.

Among the schools started in the nineteenth century were Sidcot (1808), Saffrom Walden (1811, from a previously established institution founded in 1702), Wigton (1815), Bootham (1823), the Mount (1831), Rawdon (1832), Penkett (1834), Ayton (1841), Sibford (1842), and Leighton Park (1890). The quarterly meetings generally had oversight of those institutions.

As time passed, the curricula of those schools widened, the activities became more varied, the rules became more humane, and the fees increased. Those schools provided what Friends called a “guarded” education.

One of the most interesting developments came in the period between 1820 and 1840, when a Friend named Joseph Lancaster began to use his ablest older students as prefects or assistant teachers, to make up for his lack of qualified instructors. That the method was adopted by non-Friends and even to some extent by educators abroad. It became widely known as the Lancasterian system.

In 1850 Peter Bedford began to start Quaker missions in London, and that effort soon widened to include an adult education program. Shortly later, the National Adult School Union was formed, affecting thousands of people. In it many Friends were active.

A major development in education in nineteenth-century England was the passage of the Education Act of 1870, which established universal, compulsory schooling for the first time. Many Quakers point with pride to the fact that the chief architect of that far-reaching plan was William Edward Forster, who was born a Friend and had attended a Friends school.

The next year, 1871, Oxford and Cambridge were opened to non-Anglicans for the first time, and after that long-overdue measure, many Friends would attend those two prestigious universities.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, many English Friends became interested in mission work in several countries. One place they went was Madagascar, largely to fill the call for teachers. There they founded what became by 1930 the largest Friends school in the world‚ at Antananarivo, then known as Tananarive. Within a few years, however, Friends in Madagascar would join with other Christian groups in an ecumenical movement, and the control of that school would pass to others.

Sensing the need for closer cooperation among the various Quaker schools in England, the Friends Education Council was formed in the 1920s, becoming a helpful body in strengthening the Quaker aspects of existing institutions. Later, however, the responsibilities of that council were parceled out to three other bodies: the Quaker Life, the Quaker Social Responsibility and Education group, and the Friends Joint Council.

Even though the thrust of the brief comments in this section has been on Quaker schools in England, it is important to mention that a very large number of English Friends are involved in that country’s public school system. That includes colleges, as English Quakers never developed such institutions of higher learning as the Americans did.

Today there are nine Quaker-administered secondary schools in England: Ackworth, Bootham, Breckenbrough, Friends’ School Lisbum, Leighton Park, the Mount, Saffron Walden, Sibford, and Sidcot. One Friends school remains in Ireland: Waterford.

Extremely important to English Friends, as well as to non-Friends and many people from abroad, is Woodbrooke , a Quaker center for study, research, reflection, and extension, located in Birmingham. Many well-respected members of the Religious Society of Friends in the British Isles have taught there for varying lengths of time, and many individuals have had their lives deepened, uplifted, and stretched by residence there or through its extension activities. Founded in 1903, Woodbrooke is the retreat and study center after which Pendle Hill in the United States was modeled.

Quaker education in English-speaking North America during the eighteenth century was a period of expansion of elementary schools in the east. In 1746, for example, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting expressed a concern about the formation of such institutions and urged its member meetings to found such schools where they did not already exist. Soon it added a query about education to its list of questions asked of meetings. Thus by 1750 there were around forty schools run by monthly meetings in Pennsylvania and about half that number in New Jersey. By the end of that century there were somewhere between sixty-five and seventy schools in Pennsylvania, and again about half that number in New Jersey.

 

Boarding schools at the secondary level were not known until 1796, when the Nine Partners Boarding School (the forerunner of today’s Oakwood Friends School) was started in New York State. Westtown School, in Pennsylvania, was founded shortly thereafter, in 1799.

Then, as Friends moved west, they continued to start elementary schools, almost always under the care of local meetings.

Many Quakers know about the difficulties faced by Friends in the state legislature of Pennsylvania concerning the allocation of funds for the French and Indian War, and the eventual withdrawal of Quakers from that deliberative body on the grounds of conscience. But fewer Friends probably realize that the proponents of that war in the legislature threatened to demand a loyalty oath from all teachers in the state as one way of pressuring the Quaker legislators to vote to aid the fighting. If it had been enacted, most of the teachers in Quaker schools would have had to resign their posts and the Friends schools would have ended. It was the first clash of Friends with government officials over the issue of war in relation to Quaker schools‚ and it was certainly not the last.

Friends in the Philadelphia area later became involved in a wide range of schools, including several for non-Friends. Those institutions ranged from Latin and technical high schools to sewing schools for young girls. They were in addition to the schools set up earlier for African Americans. Although the students in most of these schools were not Quakers, they were required to attend the weekly school meeting for worship and to take instruction in the Bible.

Then, when the period of Quietism set in, Friends withdrew more and more into close-knit communities where they could foster their own unique way of life. In them the school was an extremely important institution.

The nineteenth century presents a more complicated picture of Quaker education in the United States, in part because of the state of the nation at that time and in part because of the division within the Religious Society of Friends. There are eight major aspects on which we intend to comment briefly and largely topically, although to some extent chronologically, too. Those aspects are (1) the increase in the number of elementary schools; (2) the rise of secondary schools; (3) the beginning of Quaker colleges; (4) the upheaval caused by the separation of Friends between Hicksites and Orthodox; (5) the widespread efforts of Quakers in the south to help freed enslaved Africans; (6) Friends’ work with Native Americans; (7) the rise of First Day or Sunday schools; and (8) the contributions of Friends to public schools.

In his book on Quaker education, Howard Brinton argues that elementary schools in the eastern part of the United States reached their fullest development between 1800 and 1810. But that was not true in such states as North Carolina and Indiana, where they reached their highest point many years later. For example, there were forty-five Quaker schools in North Carolina in 1834–1835. The number then dipped to thirty during the Civil War. But it rose to sixty five in 1874–1875, according to Clyde Milner in his pamphlet on Quaker education in the Carolinas. In Indiana, the practice of reporting to the yearly meeting on Friends schools began in 1830, and by 1850 there were ninety-six Quaker schools. By 1890, however, there were no Quaker elementary schools left in that state, as public institutions had replaced them.

With the disappearance of their elementary schools, Friends began to establish secondary schools, nearly all of them designed for boarding students. Some of them were organized primarily to prepare teachers for the small elementary Friends schools. For other students they were a form of higher education, as colleges had not yet become commonplace. In most instances, these Quaker secondary academies were owned and administered by quarterly meetings, although a few were under the control of yearly meetings.

 

Between 1860 and 1900 at least fifty such academies were established. According to Clyde Milner, there were twelve such institutions in the Carolinas. And Ethel McDaniel’s account titled The Contribution of the Society of Friends to Education in Indiana states that there were twenty-four such academies in that state in the nineteenth century. In addition to those two places and Westtown and Nine Partners in the east, there were academies in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Kansas, Oregon, and California.

The best known of those fifty academies, largely because they have lasted in some form until the present, are Moses Brown, in Rhode Island‚ which started in 1784 but moved to Providence in 1819; Haverford in Pennsylvania‚ which started as a boarding school in 1833 and became a college in 1856; the Olney Boarding School in Ohio‚ which began in Mount Pleasant but moved to Barnesville in 1837; the New Garden Boarding School in North Carolina‚ which was established in 1837 and became Guilford College in 1888; Oak Grove School in Maine‚ which began in 1849; the Boarding School in Richmond, Indiana‚ which was launched in 1847 and became Earlham College in 1859; Friendsville, Tennessee‚ which was founded in 1857; Scattergood School in Iowa‚ which was formed in 1859; and George School in Pennsylvania‚ which was begun in 1870.

Most of the Quaker academies of the nineteenth century were replaced by public high schools. But a few became colleges‚ such as Haverford, Earlham, and Guilford. As the public secondary school movement grew, Friends in several places turned to colleges as their main focus of educational concern. Thus nine institutions of higher learning were launched by American Quakers in the nineteen century. In addition to Haverford, Earlham, and Guilford, Friends founded Swarthmore (1864), Wilmington (1871), William Penn College (1873), Pacific (1891; the school later became George Fox), Whittier (1901), and Nebraska Central (1899). Nearly all those colleges were the property of a yearly meeting, or in the case of Earlham of two yearly meetings (Indiana and Western). In several instances these Quaker colleges were founded primarily to train teachers.

 

Contrary to the general practice of those times, nearly all Quaker colleges were coeducational from the start. The two exceptions were Byrn Mawr and Haverford, established near enough to each other that they might be considered twin institutions. In recent years, however, Haverford has become coeducational, leaving Bryn Mawr as the only Quaker-related college that is a single-sex institution.

The foregoing developments show some of the gains of the Society of Friends in the nineteenth century. But that period was also a time of divisions that wracked that group in the United States and from which it has not fully recovered today.

The tragic era in American Quakerism occurred in 1827–1828 and in the years immediately following. Scholars have presented several reasons for the conflict among Friends, but there is general agreement today that two differences were most important. One was the somewhat hidden control by the wealthier and generally more conservative Quakers in the large cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore over their less affluent and somewhat more liberal country colleagues. The other was the question of a tilt toward trinitarianism or toward unitarianism. In the main, Hicksite Friends had their strength in the rural areas, and many of them leaned toward unitarianism. The stronghold of Orthodox Friends was in the cities; these Orthodox Quakers were, for the most part, trinitarians.

The Friends schools were of course involved in the painful division of property that followed the split of the tragic era. And the Orthodox schools came out considerably better in that division. Thus Friends Select School, William Penn Charter School, Westtown, Haverford College, and other institutions went to the Orthodox camp.

Consequently, the Hicksites would eventually start their own schools and colleges. Thus George School became the counterpart of Westtown, and Swarthmore College of Haverford College.

The split and the resulting division of property are a sad chapter in the story of American Quakerism but one that needs to be remembered lest Friends forget its lessons in learning to resolve their differences peacefully and to understand the subsequent history of their religious society.

Once the enslaved were freed and the Civil War ended, Friends in many places wholeheartedly focused on the task of helping former slaves to adjust to a new life. Quakers from various locations helped the freed meet their immediate needs, protect their rights, learn new skills, and gain at least a start in education.

Money was raised in the United States and in England, and many people gave up their jobs, at least temporarily, to work in the south. That was particularly true of young Quaker women, who founded several schools in the region for African Americans.  

New England and New York Friends served in and around Washington, DC, and throughout the area from Virginia to Florida. Some of their educational efforts continued until 1875, when they relinquished control of their work in Washington and turned it over to Howard University. Then they took charge of the training of African American teachers at the Normal School in Maryville, Tennessee, and the administration of the Industrial School in High Point, North Carolina, which they ran until 1923. Back in New York City, Friends also started the New York Colored Mission in 1865.

Philadelphia Friends (Orthodox) also worked in and around Washington, DC, and in parts of Virginia. An example of the extent of their efforts is the fact that two thousand formerly enslaved people were given instruction in the first two years of the Quaker work in the south.

Hicksite Friends in the Philadelphia area also did similar work, establishing a school at Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and what became the Schofield School in Aiken, South Carolina.

Meanwhile Baltimore Friends formed the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People. Through it, a normal school and four industrial schools were organized, as well as seventy other schools in that part of the United States.

Concurrently, Indiana Friends founded the Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission, working especially in the region around Vicksburg, Mississippi, after the fall of that city to Union forces in 1863. They also worked in Arkansas and started the Southland Institute, which they maintained until 1925.

It was also in the post–Civil War era that Friends assumed a great deal of responsibility for work with Native peoples. That effort grew out of the concern expressed by Quakers to President Grant that he appoint men and women of “unquestioned integrity and purity of character” to serve as agents on the newly established Indian reservations. President Grant reacted favorably to that suggestion, and nearly a hundred Friends, both Hicksite and Orthodox, became Indian agents during his administration (1869–77). One of their tasks was to establish schools for Native children, since many of the existing treaties required Native parents to send their children to school. On most of the reservations, funds for school construction, educational materials, and teachers’ salaries were taken out of the annuities the federal government paid the Native peoples, according to the terms of the treaties. But those funds fell far short, so Friends in the East and Midwest regularly sent boxes of clothing, cloth, hats, gloves, soap, books, toys, slates, and other essential supplies. The teachers, who were often wives or children of the Quaker Indian agents, made the best of their rustic conditions. Whereas many white settlers on the western frontier were calling for “extermination” of the “savages,” most Quakers believed that Native people could become “civilized,” and they set out to accomplish this in their schools. They required the children to conform to Quaker styles of dress and standards of hygiene. They taught the Bible, reading and writing, arithmetic and geography—all in English—and they discouraged children from speaking their own languages. They made the boys learn farming, which was considered women’s work in many tribes, and they made the girls stay indoors and learn housekeeping. When they felt the children’s progress was too slow, they built boarding schools to keep the children away from the “bad influence” of their families. In hindsight, we now recognize that these practices were harmful to the children themselves and to Native societies at large, forcing them to assimilate into the European Christian culture and the capitalist economy. But nineteenth-century Friends thought the best way to “save the Indians” was to absorb them into a culture the Friends considered superior. By the turn of the century, the federal government had taken over most of the Quaker Indian schools. The last Quaker school for Native children closed in 2005, but as of 2017, Evangelical and Orthodox Friends still maintain missions in several Native communities.

It was also in the nineteenth century that the First Day, or Sunday school, movement was embraced by many Quaker groups. As early as 1858, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Hicksite) recognized that a large portion of Friends children were not attending Quaker schools. Therefore, adult Friends saw the need for more religious education and began to establish First Day schools in their monthly meetings. Soon other yearly meetings joined that movement.

Certainly one of the outstanding social features of the United States in the nineteenth century was the growth of public elementary and then secondary schools. In that movement, Friends took an active leadership role in many places. Elementary schools run by Friends often became public schools; some secondary day schools and Quaker academies later became public institutions as well. Thus, in New York City and Philadelphia particularly, Quakers were pioneers in the establishment of public schools. Unfortunately, that part of Quaker history has not yet been chronicled adequately, and it is a task to which some scholars and historians might well turn in the years immediately ahead. Much has been written about Friends and Quaker schools; far too little on Friends and public education.

These few paragraphs are only the tip of the iceberg, although they give some indication of the enormous effort, primarily educational, in which Quakers of that day engaged.