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  • "Being Separated from My Dearest Husband, in This Cruel Manner:"Elizabeth Drinker and the Seven-Month Exile of Philadelphia Quakers
  • Wendy Lucas Castro (bio)

Around noon on September 2, 1777 Quaker merchant Henry Drinker was sitting at his desk copying the Monthly Meeting minutes when two men entered his house "offering a Parole for him to sign—which was refus[e]d." The men took the minutes book and "several papers out of the [open] Desk and carried them off" telling Drinker he was to stay home until they returned at nine the next morning. At the time of his arrest, Henry had five living children: sixteen-year-old Sarah, thirteen-year-old Ann, ten-year-old William, seven-year-old Henry, and three-year-old Mary, who the family called Molly. Mary Sandwith, Elizabeth's unmarried sister, also lived with the Drinkers and helped with domestic work.1

Over the course of the afternoon and the two following days similar occurrences took place at homes throughout Philadelphia. In total, thirty men were taken to the Masonic Lodge as prisoners, and of that number twenty-two were exiled to Winchester, Virginia for seven months. Sarah Logan Fisher, Quaker and wife of another exile, noted the list of exiles in her diary:

Edward Pennington [merchant, brewer, sugar refiner], Parson [Thomas] Coombe, Thomas Affleck [joiner], Thomas Gilpin [inventor], Myers Fisher [lawyer], Phineas Bond [lawyer], Thomas Pike [dancing, fencing, riding master], Elijah Brown, William Smith [broker], William Drewet Smith [doctor], Thomas Wharton [merchant], John Pemberton [minister], Henry Drinker [merchant], Owen Jones, Junr. [treasurer], Charles Jervis [hatter], Charles Eddy [merchant], Israel Pemberton [merchant], John Hunt [minister], Samuel Pleasants [merchant].2

Three exiles' names were absent from this list, having been mentioned in an earlier diary entry: Sarah's husband Thomas, cousin James Pemberton, and brother-in-law Samuel Fisher, all merchants. At the time of their exile, the men's average age (for those with known birth dates) was forty-two, most were related to another exile by blood or marriage, and two had pregnant wives.

The majority of the exiles were Quakers, who felt they were being singled out by Congress for their pacifism and its general ignorance about the Society of Friends. On August 25, 1777, General John Sullivan forwarded to Congress a letter [End Page 40] that had been found in baggage taken at Staten Island containing papers from the Spanktown Yearly Meeting. The letter reported the locations of Generals Howe, Sullivan, and Washington. The committee within Congress who read Sullivan's letter reported that the Spanktown meeting papers proved that Quakers were "with much rancour and bitterness disaffected to the American cause." Not only had some of the Quakers refused to use Continental currency, which they protested had been created only to aid the war, but the committee concluded that Quakers had it in "their power…[and] inclination, to communicate intelligence to the enemy, and in various other ways to injure the counsels and arms of America." Congress ordered the arrests of eleven Quakers and urged the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania to include names of other suspects, Quaker and non-Quaker, who should all be arrested and their papers collected to be searched for anything that would link them to the British. At most of the homes, no such papers were found even when searchers broke open a desk. The main legal problem for the exiles was that they were never officially charged with a crime—simply labeled as hostile towards the new United States—and neither the Congress nor the Council would take responsibility for the arrests and therefore the obligation of giving the men a hearing.3

The prisoners occupied themselves during the week they were held at the Masonic Lodge with attempts to secure their release. They wrote the Council asking for a trial. Instead, the Council ordered them to be sent to Staunton, Virginia where they were to be secured and treated as fitting their characters. The following day, the Council received a petition signed by over one hundred friends and relatives of the prisoners asking again for a hearing. Ultimately, no hearing occurred since neither Congress nor the Council would claim responsibility for the...

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