Female friends and the transatlantic Quaker community : 'the whole family and household of faith', c.1650 – c.1750

This thesis explores the lives and social interactions of Quaker women in the British Isles and American colonies between c.1650 and c.1750. The radical behaviour of women in the early years of Quakerism has been heavily researched. Historians, however, fail to give sufficient credit to those women who did not travel and preach as a way of life, but who used Quaker values and beliefs to organise their daily lives and give meaning to their experiences. This thesis offers a more accurate and comprehensive picture of early Quakerism, by examining how both ministering and non-itinerant women’s identities were redefined as a result of their Quaker membership. The chapters are structured around the relationships that women developed both within and without the Quaker community with the lens of focus shifting outwards from the family, to the local meeting system, then to the connections and friendships that Quaker women formed with other members of the Society, and finally, to their relationship with the non-Quaker world. In arguing that Quaker women’s domestic identities helped shape both their ministerial careers and the wider outlook of the movement, it counters the view that the originality of Quakerism stemmed from women’s ability to transcend their gender. Domesticity has greater historical dimensions than previously imagined, and the thesis shows how the private domain of the household could become entwined in the public concerns of the movement. The period under discussion was one of enormous change in terms of how Friends were viewed and understood in wider society. It was also dramatically altered by the establishment of Quaker communities within the American colonies, especially in Pennsylvania. Utilising a broad source base within a transatlantic context, which includes correspondence, official epistles, Meeting minutes, and spiritual autobiographies, the thesis maps how women contributed to a ‘cultural exchange’ through their work within both the ‘whole family and Household of faith’ and early modern society more generally