New Bedford Friends Meeting

02/13/2026

On this date in 1759 (Feb. 8th), Benjamin Lay died. (His date of birth is unknown, but it was probably in 1682.)

Quaker. Pacifist. Abolitionist. Pamphleteer. Beekeeper. Advocate for simple lifestyle. Opponent of capital punishment. Critic of the wealthy Pennsylvania Quaker elite. A man given to dramatic actions and provocative demonstrations.

Benjamin was one of the earliest and most zealous opponents of slavery in America. In 1738 he appeared at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and interrupted the proceedings. He launched into a rant against slavery, after which he plunged a dagger into a Bible containing a bladder of pokeberry juice, splattering those nearby with red liquid.

Another time he stood outside the Abington Meeting House in deep snow with his right leg bare. When Friends expressed concern, he said "You pretend compassion for me, but you do not feel for the poor slaves in your fields who go all winter half clad."

Benjamin was forcibly evicted from many Quaker Meetings. One time he was kicked out of the Market Street Meeting and he allowed himself to fall in the gutter, remaining there until the meeting ended. When Friends asked if he required assistance, he replied: "Let those who cast me here raise me up."

In spite of it all, he had many friends, including Benjamin Franklin, who published some of his tracts and broadsides.

Born in Copford, England. Died in Abington, Pennsylvania. Buried in Abington Friends Cemetery, Greenwood Avenue & Meeting House Road, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. His wife Sarah preceded him in death, having passed away around 1742.

~The Marginal Mennonite Society Heroes Series

01/25/2026

Happy birthday, Rufus M. Jones (Jan. 25, 1863 - June 16, 1948).

Quaker. Pacifist. Mystic. Philosopher. Historian. Graduate of Haverford College (1885). Master's degree from Haverford (1886). Master's degree from Harvard (1901). Longtime professor at Haverford (1893 to 1934).

In 1917, Rufus co-founded (with Henry Cadbury) the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The work of AFSC made an impression on Mennonites, who formed the Mennonite Central Committee three years later, in 1920.

At a World Missionary Conference in Jerusalem in the late 1920s, Jones urged attendees to be open to the positive influences of all world religions, "gladly recognizing the good they contain."

Author of "Studies in Mystical Religion" (1909), "Finding the Trail of Life" (1926), and "The Faith and Practice of the Quakers" (1927), among other works. In his 1914 work, "Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries," Rufus devoted a chapter to Anabaptist leader Hans Denck and his belief in the priority of the "inner word" over the "outer word."

Born into a Gurneyite Quaker family in South China, Maine. Died in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Buried in the Haverford Meeting Burial Ground, alongside his wife, Elizabeth Bartram Cadbury Jones.

~The Marginal Mennonite Society Heroes Series

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01/19/2026