Quaker History Timeline

George Fox was imprisoned for the first time in Nottingham in 1650. He was repeatedly imprisoned from the 1650s through the 1670s, making his imprisonments a defining feature of early Quaker religious life and resistance.

Image source: George Fox

In 1656, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin began preaching in Boston. Their arrival marked an important early expansion of Quaker ministry into New England and provoked a severe response from Massachusetts authorities.

In 1656, the popular Quaker minister James Nayler rode into Bristol on horseback in the pouring rain, accompanied by several men and women who said “Holy, holy, holy” and spread garments on the ground. The action imitated Jesus's entry into Jerusalem and went beyond standard Quaker practice.

Mary Dyer was executed in 1660 for defying Massachusetts laws against Quakers. Her death became one of the most prominent examples of persecution suffered by Friends in New England.

Image source: Mary Dyer

Early Quaker defenses of female members could be equivocal. After the Restoration of 1660, Friends became increasingly reluctant to publicly defend women when women used disruptive tactics against established church services.

Edward Burrough described the persecution and martyrdom of Quakers in New England in A Declaration of the Sad and Great Persecution and Martyrdom of the People of God, called Quakers, in New-England, for the Worshipping of God, published in 1661.

The Quaker Act of 1662 made it illegal to refuse to take the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown. It formed part of a series of measures used to restrict Quaker worship and organization after the Restoration.

The Conventicle Act of 1664 reaffirmed that secret meetings held by people who had not pledged allegiance to the Crown were criminal offenses. The measure intensified legal pressure on Quaker meetings.

Image source: Conventicle Act 1664

In 1666, about a dozen Quaker leaders gathered in London and issued a document called A Testimony of the Brethren. Led by Richard Farnworth while George Fox was imprisoned in Scarborough, the group sought to establish a common rule and discipline for Friends.

Around 1667, English Quaker preachers Alice and Thomas Curwen were imprisoned in Boston under Massachusetts law and publicly flogged. They had been active in Rhode Island and New Jersey before their imprisonment.

Quakers continued to meet openly even during the dangerous year of 1683. Their persistence demonstrated the movement's commitment to communal worship despite legal and political threats.

James issued declarations of indulgence in 1687 and 1688. It was widely believed that William Penn authored them, and the declarations were associated with efforts to ease restrictions on dissenting religious groups, including Quakers.

Image source: Declaration of Indulgence (1687)

Residents of Flushing cited their town charter's promise of liberty of conscience in a petition to Peter Stuyvesant on December 27, 1657. Known as the Flushing Remonstrance, it protested the persecution of Quakers and became an early statement for religious toleration in North America.

Image source: Flushing Remonstrance

Some Quakers found refuge in Providence Plantations in 1657, a settlement established by Roger Williams. The colony offered an important space for Friends seeking to practice their faith despite persecution elsewhere in New England.

Image source: Rhode Island

A group of Quakers from England landed in New Amsterdam in 1657. Their arrival contributed to the spread of Friends' beliefs in the Dutch colony and led to an important confrontation over religious liberty.

Christopher Holden and John Copeland reached Sandwich in 1657 and encountered local supporters of religious toleration. By 1658, Daniel Wing and others had become active converts, and the Sandwich Monthly Meeting was recorded as the first established Friends' monthly meeting in America.

Peter Stuyvesant arrested John Bowne in 1662 for holding illegal Quaker meetings in his home and banished him from the colony. Bowne went to Amsterdam to plead the Quakers' case, and the Dutch West India Company ordered Stuyvesant in 1663 to permit freedom of belief.

William Penn received ownership of Pennsylvania in 1681 and founded the colony in 1682. He intended it as a “holy experiment,” combining temporal government with spiritual principles and providing Quakers a safe place to live and worship.

Image source: Province of Pennsylvania

The Friends established Penn Charter in Pennsylvania in 1689. It was among the first elementary schools founded by Quakers in the colony.

Darby Friends School was founded in 1692, continuing the Quaker commitment to elementary education in Pennsylvania.

Abington Friends School was founded in 1696. Its establishment formed part of the early network of Quaker elementary schools in Pennsylvania.

The 1759 Hopewell Friends Meeting House in Frederick County, Virginia, became a lasting monument to the expansion of American Quakerism beyond its original northeastern centers.

Lynchburg, Virginia's South River Friends Meetinghouse was built in 1798. It stands as evidence of the expanding geographic reach of American Quakerism.

Haverford College was founded in 1833 as one of the major Quaker colleges. It became an important center for Friends' higher education in the United States.

Earlham College was founded in 1847 and became one of the major Quaker colleges in the United States.

Swarthmore College was founded in 1864 as one of the major Quaker colleges established in the nineteenth century.

Bryn Mawr College was founded in 1885 and became one of the major Quaker-associated colleges established later in the nineteenth century.

Image source: Bryn Mawr College

In 1688, Quakers and German Mennonites met at the Germantown meeting house in Pennsylvania to discuss their opposition to slavery. The meeting produced an early organized protest against slaveholding in the American colonies.

From 1755 to 1776, Quakers worked to free enslaved people and became the first Western organization to ban slaveholding. Their campaign made opposition to slavery a central Quaker reform cause.

By 1756, only 10 percent of the leaders of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting owned slaves. The figure reflected the growing influence of Quaker antislavery principles within the meeting.

Philadelphia Quakers formed the Friendly Association for Regaining and Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures in April 1756. The organization sought peaceful relations with Indigenous peoples during a period of colonial warfare.

The Religious Society of Free Quakers was established in Philadelphia on February 20, 1781. Originally called the Religious Society of Friends, by some styled the Free Quakers, it was a small breakaway group.

After 1783, the number of Free Quakers dwindled as members died, returned to the Society of Friends, or joined other religious institutions.

During the nineteenth century, Quakers continued to influence public life, promote reforms and equal rights, and sustain industrial concerns founded by Friends in the preceding century.

Elias Hicks's theology and antislavery views became a major source of controversy among American Friends. His popularity intensified the divisions that culminated in the Hicksite separation.

The views and popularity of Elias Hicks produced a division in 1827–1828 within the Philadelphia, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Baltimore yearly meetings. The separation created Hicksite and Orthodox branches of American Quakerism.

In 1832, William Forster became the first Quaker elected to Parliament, demonstrating Friends' growing participation in British public and political life.

In the 1840s, a small group of upper-class and reform-minded Progressive Friends emerged at Longwood, Pennsylvania. They maintained a precarious independent position for about a century.

After privately criticizing Joseph John Gurney in correspondence with sympathetic Friends, John Wilbur was expelled from his yearly meeting in a questionable proceeding in 1842. The dispute contributed to further divisions among American Friends.

Differences among American Quaker groups increased after the American Civil War. The tensions contributed to additional splintering within the Religious Society of Friends.

A Quaker served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1862 to 1881, reflecting Friends' participation in major American institutions during the nineteenth century.

From 1869 to 1885, Quakers served as appointed agents on numerous reservations and superintendencies. Their missions emphasized moral uplift and manual training.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, many American Gurneyite Quakers, led by Dougan Clark Jr., adopted paid pastors, planned sermons, revivals, hymns, and other elements of Protestant worship.

During World War I, Orthodox Friends led by Rufus Jones and Henry Cadbury created the American Friends Service Committee in 1917. It embodied an effort toward unity and organized Quaker relief and service.

Image source: American Friends Service Committee

Many Quakers from Oregon, Ohio, and Kansas became alienated from the Five Years Meeting, later Friends United Meeting, because they viewed it as influenced by theological liberalism associated with Rufus Jones. Oregon Yearly Meeting withdrew in 1927.

Herbert Hoover became the first Quaker president of the United States in 1929. His presidency marked the highest-profile political achievement of an American Friend.

Image source: Herbert Hoover

Philip Noel-Baker, a Quaker and Labour politician, represented his party in Parliament from 1929 to 1982.

In 1938–1939, shortly before the Second World War, 10,000 European Jewish children received temporary resident visas for the United Kingdom in the Kindertransport. Quakers were involved in this humanitarian effort.

Image source: Kindertransport

Beginning in 1955 and continuing for a decade, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York yearly meetings, along with Canadian Yearly Meeting, reunited after the Hicksite separation of 1827.

Richard Nixon became the second Quaker president of the United States in 1969, following Herbert Hoover.

Image source: Richard Nixon