List of Quakers - People With Quaker Roots

People With Quaker Roots

Individuals whose parents were Quakers or who were Quakers themselves at one time in their lives but then converted to another religion, formally or informally distanced themselves from the Society of Friends, or were disowned by their Friends Meeting.

• Herbert W. Armstrong, (1892–1986), US founder of the Worldwide Church of God.
• Morris Birkbeck, ((1764–1825), farmer, writer, and promoter of emigration to Illinois
• Daniel Boone, (1735–1820), American frontiersman.
• Smedley Butler (1881–1940), U.S. Marine and social activist.
• Benjamin Chew, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, became an Anglican in the 1750s.
• Ezra Cornell, (1807–1874), American founder of Cornell University, expelled for marrying outside the faith.
• Warder Cresson, (1798–1860), US campaigner, author, and convert to Judaism.
• Emily Deschanel, (b. 1976), American actress and television producer of Quaker extraction.
• Zooey Deschanel, (b. 1980), American actress and singer/songwriter/musician of Quaker extraction.
• Sarah Stickney Ellis, (1799–1872), writer on women's roles, became a Congregationalist.
• Samuel Tertius Galton, (1783–1844), businessman and scientist, convert to Anglicanism.
• Jesse Gause, (1785–1836), early American leader of Latter Day Saint movement.
• Nathanael Greene, (1742–1786), major general in Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War, expelled from the Quakers in 1773.
• Maria Hack, (1777–1844), educational writer and contributor to Isaac Crewdson controversy.
• Sam Harris, (b. 1967), author of The End of Faith with a possibly lapsed Quaker father.
• Louisa Gurney Hoare, (1784–1836), writer on education, convert to Anglicanism.
• Thomas Hornor, (1767–1834), Canadian farmer and politician, expelled for freemasonry and joining a militia.
• John Eliot Howard, (1807–1883), English chemist and developer of quinine.
• Eric Knight, (1897–1943), English-born novelist and children's writer, author of Lassie Come-Home (1940).
• Lyndon LaRouche, (b. 1922), disowned in 1941.
• David Lean, (1908–1991), British film director.
• Joseph Lister, (1827–1912), English surgeon who promoted the idea of sterile surgery.
• E. V. Lucas, (1868–1938) English writer.
• Thomas Merton, (1915–1968). His mother was an American Quaker and he attended a couple meetings, but he was baptized and primarily raised as an Anglican.
• Maria Mitchell, (1818–1889), one of the first women in astronomy. She retained ties to the Quakers, but became a Unitarian.
• Thomas Paine (1737–1809). His father was a Quaker, but he was a non-religious deist.
• Hilary Douglas Clark Pepler, (1878–1951), converted to Catholicism and founded The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic.
• Thomas Rickman, (1776–1841), an English architect and author, and a major figure in the Gothic Revival.
• Thomas 'Clio' Rickman, (1760–1834), political pampleteer, and friend of Thomas Paine.
• Ned Rorem, (b. 1923), composer.
• Anna Sewell (1820–1878), English children's writer, convert to Anglicanism in about 1838.
• Hannah Whitall Smith, (1832–1911), US-born evangelical preacher, suffragist and temperance campaigner.
• Robert Pearsall Smith, (1827-1898), US-born leading figure in the UK Higher Life movement.
• Satyananda Stokes, (1882–1946), raised a Quaker as "Samuel Evans Stokes, Jr.", but later converted to Hinduism.
• Cheryl Tiegs, (b. 1947), American model, current religious status uncertain.
• William Weeks, (1813–1900), architect and temporary convert to Mormonism.
• Walt Whitman, (1819–1892), eminent American poet, born to Hicksite Quaker parents.