The Quakers in Connecticut: A Neglected Phase of History

QUAKERS IN CONNECTICUT11 THE QUAKERS IN CONNECTICUT: A NEGLECTED PHASE OF HISTORY1 By Nelson R. Burr QUAKER historians generally touch Connecticut rather lightly, for the great centers of their faith have been elsewhere. Little has been known to others and even less has been written by them, concerning a most interesting phase in the history of this State. Not because Connecticut did not touch Quakerism, for in fact it laid a heavy hand upon the "peculiar people." The probable reason for the comparative neglect is that the sources of Quaker history in this State are scattered and somewhat obscure. Yet the "people in derision called Quakers" took a significant even if not a major part in Connecticut's religious history, which is still to be fully and sympathetically written. By itself, their contribution to the valiant contest for religious liberty would entitle them to earnest regard. And they have not spoken their last word to the State : they are still among us with their "concern" for humanity—however little the public at large seems to be aware of them. Very few who are not members of the Society know that there are now two meetings in Connecticut, both very much alive. Quakerism has been here for nearly three hundred years. Almost as soon as they began to make a real impression upon Great Britain, Quaker missionaries started their journeyings in the American colonies and would not keep out of New England— where they were greeted in most places with about as much enthusiasm as an attack of the cholera or the smallpox. Colonial governments vied in persecution, and passed laws Suggesting the Inquisition. If Connecticut did not hang any Quakers—as Massachusetts certainly did—it was not from any impulse of good will. Their first appearance in the 1650's threw the Colony into a panic. The depth and sincerity of fear and hatred may be measured by the ferocity of the laws aimed to crush the "notorious 1 An address delivered at the monthly meeting of the Connecticut Historical Society, April 1, 1941, and at a meeting of the Hartford Society of Friends, April 24, 1941. Vol. 31, No. 1. Spring 1942 12FRIENDS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION hérétiques." Reading them in cold print, one cannot believe that the frantic intolerance of the Old World had lost any of its venom in the ocean air. From 1656 to 1658 the General Court of Connecticut passed a series of increasingly savage acts against the Quakers. The first forbade any town to entertain them longer than fourteen days, on penalty of £5 per week, and the unwelcome visitors would be forced to languish in jail until sent away. Ship captains were compelled to transport them as soon as possible , on pain of £20 for not complying.2 As this seemed far too mild, next year the Court stiffened it to prevent the commonwealth from "being poisoned in their judgm' & principles." Anyone who even spoke with a Quaker must pay£5 for the privilege. Suspected members of the dreaded sect had to endure an examination by the magistrates and elders, and if proved guilty, go to prison or quit the colony. A few weeks later the legislators suddenly realized that the law had one possibly fatal loophole, which was plugged at once by an act to suppress all Quaker literature by fining the unhappy possessor 1Oj for each offense. That meant searching of homes : and what became of the old saw, that every Englishman's house was his castle?3 The crowning outrage was still to come, an act of October 1658, empowering local magistrates to punish Quakers and other heretics by fine, exile, or corporal punishment, and to apply the same to any person daring to bring them into the colony. The fine might run up to £10—ruinous to any but the rich.4 New Haven Colony—settled by an even tougher group of Puritans than Connecticut—laid on the whip with even greater fury. The first blow was a law of 1657, forbidding Quakers to enter or live in the colony and ordering the speedy suppression of any native ones, "for the better prevention of such dangerous errours." 5 That...