Companions in Preaching and Suffering: Itinerant Female Quakers in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World

This article explores the 'sufferings' of itinerant Quaker women in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Quakers who were Public Friends — who traveled and preached as a testimony of faith — were a formative and highly visible part of the early Colonial British American landscape. Itinerant Quaker women faced the perils and discomforts of frequent transatlantic travel, and they were ostracized as well as physically abused on their journeys. But believing that the most genuine followers of Christ suffered in his name, Quakers felt that writing about and experiencing bodily torments and spiritual tribulations identified them as true religious adherents. Many itinerant women wrote about their journeys in printed testimonials, and these writings were celebrated by Quakers and circulated widely throughout Britain and its early colonies. For women Friends, the practices of writing and of suffering also became a testimony of their gender; traveling Quaker women refigured seventeenth- and eighteenth-century constructions of the female body, femininity, and female sociability. Relying upon female companions who accompanied them on their journeys, itinerant Quakers sought solidarity with and solace from other women during their travels, and they expected female companions to sustain and succor them during difficult missions. This spiritual society both heightened and reinforced the spiritual, bodily and emotional experiences of early Quaker women.