Tag Archives ⇒ Mary Crauderueff

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.

Inside Haverford’s Manumission Archives
Inside Haverford’s Man­u­mis­sion Archives 

An inter­view with Mary Crauderu­eff and David Satten-López.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

QuakerSpeak on old Quaker records

July 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I must admit to lov­ing old libraries and geek­ing out on his­to­ries. In this week’s install­ment of Quak­er­S­peak, Mary Crauderu­eff, cura­tor at Haver­ford College’s Quak­er Col­lec­tion, talks about some of the favorite parts of her work:

You have things like mem­ber­ship records, mar­riage records, and mar­riage cer­tifi­cates. You have min­utes of the busi­ness meet­ings and you have com­mit­tee min­utes. Oth­er cool things that we have are deeds for meet­ings and meet­ing­hous­es. Peo­ple will some­times come to var­i­ous Quak­er archives and say, “Our meet­ing is in this dis­pute with the town­ship. We need to find the orig­i­nal deed to the meet­ing­house and we think that you have it. Can we look at it?” 

http://​Quak​er​s​peak​.com/​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​a​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​i​c​a​l​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​l​i​b​r​a​ry/