1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery - Historical Background

Historical Background

Pennsylvania was founded in 1682 by William Penn as an English colony where people from any country and faith could settle, free from religious persecution. In payment of a debt to Penn's father, Penn had received from King Charles II of England a large land grant west of New Jersey which King Charles II of England named Pennsylvania after William's father, Admiral Penn. Penn had become friends with George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, called Quakers after their unique way of speaking in Meeting for Worship. Penn had converted to Quakerism and had been imprisoned several times for his beliefs. The king allowed Penn to establish a proprietary colony where Penn appointed the governor and judges but established an otherwise democratic system of government with freedom of religion, fair trials, elected representatives, and separation of church and state.

In the period 1660 to 1680, several Quakers including William Penn visited the Netherlands and the Rhine valley of what would later become Germany, and organized gatherings where they preached the Quaker testimony. Many people, including some who had been Mennonites in Krefeld and Krisheim, in the German "Palatinate", converted to the new Quaker faith. Among them was Francis Daniel Pastorius, a young German born near Würzburg to a family of elite officeholders. After training as an attorney, Pastorius sought spiritual release from his lucrative but uninspiring practice with the local gentry, and he turned inward looking for a philosophical purity in his life. He was attracted to Penn's colony as a place where religious freedom would allow him to start afresh a life free from "libertinism and sins of the European world." Meanwhile, the Mennonites and Quakers in Holland and along the Rhine valley were often imprisoned for belonging to a faith other than the officially recognized Catholicism and Lutheranism.

In 1681, Penn invited people from his native England and from other European countries to the new colony. He arrived in 1682, had the land surveyed, organized Philadelphia as a welcoming town laid out as a grid with many green spaces, and profited by selling lots. Soon, the waterfront was a bustle of activity, town streets were laid out with houses built on narrow lots, and churches of several different faiths were established. The town merchants traded with the largely Quaker colony of West Jersey. The town and surrounding countryside prospered.