New Light on Hannah Barnard, A Quaker "Heretic"

New Light on Hannah Barnard, A Quaker "Heretic" David W. Maxey* "I have always regretted," wrote Lucretia Mott in one of her last letters, "that so little has been published of the sad experience of that remarkable woman, Hannah Barnard."1 This neglect of a pivotal figure in Quakerism at the beginning of the nineteenth century has continued to the present—an undeserved fate, one may agree, for a woman of spunk, totally confident of her own reasoning , who was a precursor of those forces that would, before long, cause a painful rift in the Society of Friends. What is known about her and what produced a pamphlet war in her day is the controversy bearing her name which led to her censure by the London Yearly Meeting and to her subsequent disownment by her own meeting in Hudson, New York.2 The principal objective of this investigation will be to locate the missing Hannah Barnard, the neighbor and family member living in the small community about thirty miles south of Albany on the east side of the Hudson River. Yet the elusive private person is hardly separable from the public Friend, an accredited minister, who discovered herself only after she left home to spend three years abroad in religious labor and contention. It is, therefore, this critical experience in her life which must first be considered. In the 1790s, when her children had grown less dependent on her, Hannah Barnard pursued her calling as a minister in extended journeys through New York State and New England.3 She felt summoned in due course to visit the British Isles and applied to the Hudson Monthly Meeting for the certificate of approbation with which *David W. Maxey is a partner in the law firm of Drinker Biddle & Reath. 1.Anna Davis Hallowell, ed., James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884) 478. 2.The most complete biography of Hannah Barnard is provided by T. D. Seymour Bassett in Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer, eds., 3 vols. Notable American Women, 1607-1950 (Cambridge: Harvard, Belknap Press, 1971) 1:88-90. See also Margaret Hope Bacon, Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), an admirable recent study which is, however, disappointing in its scant mention of this prototypical figure; Bliss Forbush, Elias Hicks: Quaker Liberal (New York: Columbia, 1956) 118-120, 185; and Rufus M. Jones, The Later Periods of Quakerism, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1921) 1:299-307. 3.The records of various Quaker business meetings in New York State during this period are available in the Haviland Records Room of the New York Yearly Meeting in New York City and on microfilm at the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. These records shall hereafter be cited by reference to 62Quaker History Friends so inspired to spread the gospel message were necessarily armed when they moved from the jurisdiction of one yearly meeting to another. That document dated October 26, 1797, was signed by her husband Peter, as well as by many in the meeting who would later condemn her; it certified that she was "a friend in esteem with us" whose ministry was "sound and edifying, attended with a comfortable evidence of her call thereunto." The Nine Partners Quarterly Meeting and the New York Yearly Meeting added their endorsements, and thus fortified, Hannah Barnard sailed for England, arriving in Falmouth in July of 1798; as was often the case in such undertakings , she was joined by a companion, Elizabeth Coggeshall of Rhode Island.4 During the next ten months, these two missionaries journeyed over 2300 miles, visiting 320 families in twenty counties. To a relative in the United States, Hannah Barnard wrote of the "very hearty reception and great openness" with which they were met, especially in Cornwall among the thousands of kinder spirited sober Methodists many of whom were made near and dear to our hearts and stand recorded in affectionate remembrance as the adopted children of the same heavenly Father and members of the true spiritual household of Faith.5 As the time for the Yearly Meeting approached in May, 1799, and still aglow with...