50 Fun Facts About Quakers

What is the formal name of the body whose members are known as Quakers?

Members call each other Friends; the formal name dates from the 18th century and derives from 'Friends of the Light' and 'Friends of Truth'.

Who founded the Quaker movement in mid-17th-century England?

Apprenticed to a shoemaker, he had a revelation in 1647 that Christ could be experienced directly without ordained clergy.

How did the nickname 'Quaker' originate?

Fox recorded that Justice Gervase Bennet 'was the first that called us Quakers'; the ridicule stuck and many Friends adopted it.

Where in Lancashire did the founder have his 1652 vision of 'a great people to be gathered'?

He then travelled around England, the Netherlands and Barbados preaching that Christ had come to teach his people himself.

What name is given to the travelling preachers who spread Quakerism in the 1650s?

Also called the First Publishers of Truth, they actually numbered more than sixty; Edward Burrough, who debated John Bunyan in pamphlets, was one.

Which 'mother of Quakerism' hosted the early movement at Swarthmoor Hall and married the founder in 1669?

She was the widow of Judge Thomas Fell; the Cumbrian hall is still used as a Quaker retreat house.

Which early Quaker leader was tried for blasphemy after riding into Bristol on a horse in 1656, re-enacting Palm Sunday?

Parliament debated his punishment for weeks; he was pilloried, whipped and had his tongue bored.

Roughly how many Quakers were there in England and Wales at the movement's 1680 peak?

That was 1.15 percent of the population; persecution under the Quaker Act 1662 and Conventicle Act 1664 ended with the 1689 Act of Toleration.

What pronoun were Quakers famous for using as an ordinary form of address?

Plain speech, plain dress, teetotalism and a refusal to swear oaths or fight marked Friends out for centuries.

Why do Quakers make 'declarations' rather than vows at their weddings?

The couple exchange declarations before God and the meeting, then every witness present, down to the youngest child, signs the certificate.

What is Quaker unprogrammed worship, practised in Britain and by a minority of Friends worldwide, mainly made up of?

Only about 11 percent of Friends worship this way; anyone present may rise to offer unprepared ministry if they feel led.

What is a Quaker 'clearness committee'?

If the couple seem ready, the marriage is recommended to the meeting.

How is a decision reached at a Quaker business meeting?

Direct replies to another speaker are not permitted, the aim being to seek truth rather than debate.

What is the 'plain calendar' used by traditional Quakers?

Sunday is First Day and January is First Month, avoiding names derived from pagan gods.

What acronym do US Quakers use for the six testimonies from simplicity to stewardship?

In Britain the acronym STEPS is sometimes used instead: simplicity, truth, equality, peace and sustainability.

What is the Quaker term for the divine presence believed to guide each person?

Friends generally avoid creeds and hold to a priesthood of all believers drawn from the First Epistle of Peter.

Which 1673 work by Scottish Quaker Robert Barclay became a prominent theological text of the movement?

Barclay was also titular governor of the East Jersey colony for most of the 1680s despite never living there.

What percentage of the world's roughly 377,000 adult Quakers lived in Africa as of 2017?

North America accounted for 22 percent.

In which African country did the most successful Quaker mission begin before spreading to Uganda and Rwanda?

Cleveland Friends went to Mombasa; today Kenyan applicants typically complete two years of adult education before membership.

What is the largest branch of Quakerism, worshipping with a pastor, singing and a prepared message?

About 40 percent of Quakers belong to it, dominant in Africa and parts of the United States; only 11 percent practise silent worship.

The 1827 Great Separation split American Quakers into Orthodox Friends and followers of which preacher?

Hicksites tended to be poorer and rural; the wealthier Orthodox wanted to turn the sect into a respectable church.

Which British Quaker led the 19th-century evangelical movement whose followers formed the Five Years Meeting?

His sister was a famous prison reformer; today Gurneyite Friends make up almost half of Quakers worldwide.

Which two Quaker women were imprisoned and banished for preaching in Boston in 1656?

Their books were burned and their property confiscated by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Which Quaker was hanged near Boston Common in 1660 for defying a Puritan ban, one of the 'Boston martyrs'?

The next year Charles II forbade Massachusetts from executing anyone for professing Quakerism.

Which colony did William Penn found in 1682 as a commonwealth run on Quaker principles?

Charles II granted the land to settle a debt owed to Penn's father, an admiral; Penn also founded West Jersey in 1676.

With which Lenape leader did William Penn sign a peace treaty that held for almost a century?

The peace lasted until the Penn's Creek Massacre of 1755.

How many of Rhode Island's governors in its first 100 years were Quakers?

Rhode Island, West Jersey and the colony Penn founded in 1682 were the three that tolerated Friends in the 17th century.

Which famous American object was cast by Quakers in Philadelphia?

Author David Yount credits Quakers with introducing jury trial, public education and equal rights ideas to America.

How many of the 12 founders of the 1787 Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade were Quakers?

They included William Dillwyn and Samuel Hoare Jr; as dissenters they could not sit in Parliament, so Wilberforce fronted the campaign.

Which New Jersey tailor and Quaker preacher travelled the colonies urging Friends to free their slaves?

He also urged tax resistance during the French and Indian War and campaigned against cruelty to animals.

Which Indiana Quaker was nicknamed the 'President of the Underground Railroad'?

An estimated three thousand fugitives passed through his care; his Fountain City home is called the railroad's 'Grand Central Station'.

Which Rhode Island merchant funded the slave ship Sally in 1764, then became a Quaker abolitionist?

He broke with his three brothers over the trade; the family name lives on in Brown University.

Which Quaker prison reformer, the 'Angel of Prisons', was on the £5 note from 2002 to 2017?

After visiting Newgate in 1813 she drove the Gaols Act 1823, which required female warders for female inmates.

Which Quaker abolitionist, excluded from the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention, helped organise Seneca Falls in 1848?

All but one of the five women who instigated Seneca Falls were Quakers.

Which two US presidents were born into Quaker families?

Hoover was born in West Branch, Iowa; Nixon in Yorba Linda, California, where his father had converted from Methodism.

Which American poet and abolitionist, author of 'Snow-Bound', was known as the 'Quaker poet'?

Whittier College in California and the Quaker town of Whittier are named after him.

Which organiser of the 1963 March on Washington was raised by a Quaker grandmother in West Chester?

His grandmother Julia Rustin was a Quaker; he became a leading advocate of nonviolence.

What honour did the Friends Service Council and American Friends Service Committee accept for Quakers in 1947?

It recognised their relief work in two world wars, including the Friends Ambulance Unit.

In what year did Britain first exempt Quakers from military service?

In both world wars many Friends served instead in the Friends Ambulance Unit, aiming to 'build up a new world rather than fighting to destroy the old'.

What is a 'Quaker gun'?

The 18th- and 19th-century deception got its name from the Friends' religious refusal to fight.

Which British bank traces its origins to two Quaker goldsmith-bankers in Lombard Street from 1690?

John Freame and Thomas Gould started the business; Friends Provident was another Quaker-founded financial firm.

Which chocolate firm was founded in Birmingham in 1824 by a Quaker selling tea, coffee and drinking chocolate?

George Cadbury later built the Bournville model village for the workers; Rowntree and Fry, the other big British chocolate makers, were also Quaker firms.

Which shoe company grew from a Quaker sheepskin business begun in Street, Somerset, in the 1820s?

Cyrus Clark went into fellmongering and tanning with a Quaker cousin in 1821; the firm's headquarters are still in Street.

Which Quaker ironmaster's family at Coalbrookdale were key figures in Britain's Industrial Revolution?

Fellow Quaker Edward Pease of Darlington promoted the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the world's first public railway.

What is the truth about the Quaker Oats Company's connection to the Quaker faith?

The Quaker Mill Company of Ravenna, Ohio filed the first trademark for a breakfast cereal in 1877, 'a figure of a man in Quaker garb'.

What is the largest religious body of Quakers in the United Kingdom called?

A Friend belongs to a yearly meeting, usually via a local monthly meeting; one survey found 30 percent of British Quakers held non-theistic or agnostic views.

What was the first organisation for non-theist Quakers, founded in Los Angeles in 1939?

The Quaker Universalist Fellowship followed in Britain in 1978 and the United States in 1983.

Which college near Philadelphia, founded by Quakers in 1833, is the oldest of the Quaker colleges in the area?

Swarthmore, founded 1864, was one of America's earliest coeducational colleges.

Which Quaker whaling island in Massachusetts sheltered escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad?

Its Quaker whalers appear in Moby-Dick; a leading Quaker suffragist was born a Coffin there.

What Quaker body, formalised in 1937 after joint wartime relief work, links yearly meetings worldwide?

World War I relief work brought the diverse Quaker strands back into fellowship.