Free Quaker

English

Noun

Free Quaker (plural Free Quakers)

1. (historical) A member of a now largely defunct American Quaker (Christian) sect which did not adhere to the Peace Testimony and therefore supported or engaged in military action during the American Revolutionary War.
   • 1896, Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine, page 836:

     The flags used by the army were made by a "Free Quaker woman," who was on this account disowned by the meeting of which she was a member. Many other services were openly rendered by Friends […]

   • 1897, Silas Weir Mitchell, Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker, Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-colonel on the Staff of His Excellency General Washington, page 290:

     We met no one on the way save a farmer or two, and here, being near to the Schuylkill, my old master farrier took leave of me at the farm of Edward Masters, which lay in our way, and commended me to the care of this good Free Quaker.

   • 1990, William C. Kashatus, Conflict of Conviction: A Reappraisal of Quaker Involvement in the American Revolution, University Press of America, →ISBN, page 131:

     In 1782 the Philadelphia Free Quakers, who had been conducting their meetings in private residences to that time, purchased a lot […] for the construction of a Free Quaker meetinghouse.

   • 2001, Joyce Oldham Appleby, INHERITING THE REVOLUTION, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 201:

     Philadelphia, he said, had thirty-four places of worship representing eighteen religious sects: three Swedish churches, three Quaker, one Free Quaker, three Episcopal, one Baptist, two Presbyterian, four Catholic, two German Lutheran, […]

   • 2010, Lawrence A. Peskin, Manufacturing Revolution: The Intellectual Origins of Early American Industry, JHU Press, →ISBN:

     Born in 1736, Wetherill began his career in Philadelphia as a carpenter. Although he was also a Quaker preacher, he actively supported the Revolution and was one of the leaders of the pro-Revolutionary Free Quaker movement.

   • 2018, Mitchell K. Hall, Opposition to War: An Encyclopedia of U.S. Peace and Antiwar Movements [2 volumes], ABC-CLIO, →ISBN, page 36:

     A splinter group of Friends, the Free Quakers, supported the patriot cause, […]