Early Quakers in Surinam (1658-1659)

EARLY QUAKERS IN SURINAM (1658-1659) By Kenneth L. Carroll Both early Quakerism and early Christianity were marked by an explosive missionary effort. Within a generation of its birth, Christianity had spread throughout the eastern half of the Mediterranean world and soon moved into the western end. The missionary drive of the early Friends, however, was even more explosive—so that in the first two or three years after the start of the movement in 16521 Quakers were traveling throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland proclaiming their prophetic faith and insights. By the end of 1655 Friends missionary activities had spread not only to the European continent but also to the West Indies and possibly even to the Chesapeake Bay area of the American mainland .2 Quaker activity in the New World in the 1650's extended all the way from Newfoundland southward to Surinam on the northern coast of South America. Although the story of mainland American Quakerism is fairly well known and that of West Indian Quakerism is somewhat recoverable, little has been discovered about the brief period of Friends activity in Surinam. Tolles, in his valuable Quakers and the Atlantic Culture, points out how fragmentary is "our knowledge of Quaker incursions into Surinam and Newfoundland ."3 Braithwaite, Jones, and Hodgkin are all totally dependent upon the brief account of John Bowron's Surinam labors found in Piety Promoted* *Professor of Religion, Southern Methodist University. 1.Although Fox was at work with his preaching as early as 1647, it is customary to date the start of Quakerism with 1652—when the Pendle Hill and Firbank Fell episodes led to a great growth of activity and converts. 2.Kenneth L. Carroll, "Elizabeth Harris, The Founder of American Quakerism," Quaker History, 57 (1968), 96-111 3.Frederick B. Tolles, Quakers and the Atlantic Culture (New York: Macmillan, I960), pp. 138-139. Cf. p. 9. Tolles, apparently, was acquainted only with John Bowron's visit, which he dated tentatively (and wrongly) as ca. 1656. 4.William C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism, 2nd ed. (Cambridge . University Press, 1955), pp. 337, 402, 575; Rufus M. Jones, Quakers in the American Colonies (London: Macmillan, 1911), p. 43; Henry T. Hodgkin, Friends Beyond Seas (London: Headley Bros., 1916), p. 16. Piety Promoted, Being a Collection of the Dying Sayings of Many of the People Called Quakers, ed. John Tomkms and John Fields (Dublin, 1721) . 83 84QUAKER HISTORY Henry J. Cadbury, in bis notes to the second edition of Braithwaite 's work (1955), seems to lament that "Singularly little has been published about the mission of Friends to America for the period covered by the present volume, to supplement or correct The Quakers in the American Colonies, in the forty years since that volume and this were first published."5 This is the challenge which has encouraged me to gather together in this brief essay what little information I have discovered about early Quakers in Surinam. The first "Publisher of Truth" to reach Surinam was John Bowron (1627-1704) of Cotherstone in northwest Yorkshire. Convinced by George Fox and James Nayler in 1653, Bowron soon became a Quaker minister and remained active in the ministry fifty-one years. As early as 1654 he was at work in Scotland. In 1656 he made the first of his many visits to Ireland and also that same year traveled once more in Scotland. It was from Scotland (in late 1657 or in 1658) that Bowron took shipping from Barbados with the Quaker shipowner and captain William Plumley," arriving —it would seem—either late in 1657 or more likely early in 1658. In Barbados, we are told, he was "kindly received . . . and had many Good Meetings there; and they would have had him tarried with them as long as he lived." As soon as he felt his work in Barbados was over, Bowron (accompanied by a Barbados Friend who served as an interpreter) took shipping for Surinam, and Travel'd upon the coasts of Guinea, a Country of South America, three or four hundred miles where the people go mostly Naked He went to their sort of worship, which was performed by beating upon Holly [hollow?] Trees, and making...