John Woolman

John Woolman was born in 1720, originally from Rancocas, New Jersey, into a family who were members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). His father Samuel Woolman was a farmer. Their estate lay between Burlington and Mount Holly Township in the New Jersey colony, near the Delaware River. Woolman's maternal and paternal grandparents were early Quaker settlers in Burlington County, New Jersey.[3]

During his youth, he happened upon a robin's nest that held hatchlings. Woolman began throwing rocks at the mother robin to see if he could hit her. After killing the mother bird, he was filled with remorse, thinking of the baby birds who had no chance of survival without her. He got the nest down from the tree and quickly killed the hatchlings, believing it to be the most merciful thing to do. This experience weighed on his heart. He was inspired to love and protect all living things from then on.[4]

Woolman married Sarah Ellis, a fellow Quaker, in a ceremony at the Chesterfield Friends Meeting. Sarah bore him a daughter whom they named Mary.[5] His choice to lead a "life of simplicity" meant making sacrifices for his family.

As a young man, Woolman began work as a clerk for a merchant. When he was 23, his employer asked him to write a bill of sale for a slave. Though he told his employer that he thought that slaveholding was inconsistent with Christianity, he wrote the bill of sale.

By the age of 26, he had become an independent and successful tradesman. He refused to write the part of another customer's will which would have bequeathed or transferred the ownership of a slave, and instead convinced the owner to set the slave free by manumission. Many Friends (fellow Quakers) believed that slavery was bad—even a sin. Other Friends kept slaves but considered trading in slaves to be sinful.

Woolman eventually retired from business (i.e., "merchandising") because he viewed profit-making as distracting from his religion. He wrote that he took up the trade of tailor in order to have more free time to travel and witness to fellow Quakers about his concerns.[6]

Woolman was committed to the Friends' Testimony of Simplicity. While in his 20s, he decided that the retail trade demanded too much of his time. He believed he had a calling to preach "truth and light" among Friends and others. In his Journal, he said that he quit the shop as it was "attended with much outward care and cumber," that his "mind was weaned from the desire of outward greatness," and that "where the heart is set on greatness, success in business did not satisfy the craving."[7] Woolman gave up his career as a tradesman and supported himself as a tailor; he also maintained a productive orchard.

He addressed issues of economic injustice and oppression in his Journal and other writings, and knew international trade had local effects. Despite supporting himself as a tailor, Woolman refused to use or wear dyed fabrics, because he had learned that many workers in the dye industry were poisoned by some of the noxious substances used. Concerned about treatment of animals, in later life, Woolman avoided riding in stagecoaches, for he believed operators were too often cruel and injurious to the teams of horses.

Woolman decided to minister to Friends and others in remote areas on the frontier. In 1746, he went on his first ministry trip with Isaac Andrews. They traveled about 1,500 miles round-trip in three months, going as far south as North Carolina. He preached on many topics, including slavery, during this and other such trips.

In 1754 Woolman published Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. He continued to refuse to draw up wills that bequeathed ownership of slaves to heirs. Over time, and working on a personal level, he individually convinced many Quaker slaveholders to free their slaves. As Woolman traveled, when he accepted hospitality from a slaveholder, he insisted on paying the slaves for their work in attending him. He refused to be served with silver cups, plates, and utensils, as he believed that slaves in other regions were forced to dig such precious minerals and gems for the rich. He observed that some owners used the labor of their slaves to enjoy lives of ease, which he found to be the worst situation not only for the slaves, but for the moral and spiritual condition of the owners. He could condone those owners who treated their slaves gently, or worked alongside them.

Woolman worked within the Friends' tradition of seeking the guidance of the Spirit of Christ and patiently waiting to achieve unity in the Spirit. As he went from one Friends' meeting to another, he expressed his concern about slaveholding. Gradually various Quaker Meetings began to see the evils of slavery; their minutes increasingly reflecting their condemnation of the practice. Quaker records bear witness to his and a few others' success – by the time the 1776–1783 revolution was over, almost all North American Quakers had freed their slaves, and those few Quakers who had been engaged in the trading or shipment of slaves had ceased such activities as well.

He lived out the Friends' Peace Testimony by protesting the French and Indian War (1754–1763), the North American front of the Seven Years' War. In 1755, he decided to oppose paying those colonial taxes that supported the war and urged tax resistance among fellow Quakers in the Philadelphia Meeting, even at a time when American settlers on the frontier were being raided by French and allied Native Americans. Some Quakers joined him in his protest, and the Meeting sent a letter on this issue to other groups. In one of his prophetic dreams, recorded in his Journal, Woolman negotiated between two heads of state in an effort to prevent an outbreak of war.[8]

Woolman was a vegetarian.[9] He opposed the overworking of draft animals and avoided stage-coaches as he believed the horses were abused.[9] Woolman commented that "true religion consisted in an inward life, wherein the heart doth love and reverence God the Creator, and learns to exercise true justice and goodness not only toward all men, but also toward the brute creatures."[9]

Woolman's final journey was to England in 1772. During the voyage he stayed in steerage and spent time with the crew, rather than in the better accommodations enjoyed by some passengers. He attended the British London Yearly Meeting. The Friends resolved to include an abolitionist statement in their Epistle (a type of letter sent to Quakers in other places). Woolman traveled to York, but he had contracted smallpox and died there. He was buried in York on October 9, 1772.[10] There is strong doubt whether the portrait shown here (and very often elsewhere) can be of John Woolman. (Janet Whitney in John Woolman, Quaker, 1943 re. AM Gummere's Journal and Essays of John Woolman, 1922.) There is no known depiction of John Woolman but the authentic silhouette of his brother Uriah shows a very different face to this elderly, wizened subject.