2010 Gest Fellow: Katharine Gerbner
Gest Fellow Katharine Gerbner is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University. Her research is on Protestantism and Slavery in the early Atlantic World.
Katharine Gerbner 2010 Gest Fellow
During my month at Haverford, I have examined the early Quaker stance on slavery. Quakers—renowned abolitionists by the late eighteenth-century—were deeply conflicted about the significance of slavery in the seventeenth-century. Hundreds of slave-owning Friends lived on Barbados, the sugar-rich British island in the Caribbean, and most found no contradiction between owning slaves and preaching equality. In Pennsylvania, Quaker merchants were active participants in the slave trade and a number of Quaker families held slaves.
Using the resources at the Haverford Quaker Collection, I have sought to understand and contextualize seventeenth-century Quaker views on slavery. My primary sources include Meeting Minutes from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, as well as epistles and books of discipline. In these documents, I have examined not only Quaker slavery and antislavery, but also other contemporaneous debates and controversies within the Quaker community. By comparing debates on slavery to debates on other topics, I have developed a better sense of the cultural and political context that accompanied seventeenth-century Quaker slave owning.
Having the opportunity to spend a month studying Quakers and slavery at Haverford has been both productive and fascinating. I am very grateful to the staff at the Quaker Collection for welcoming me so warmly and offering such excellent advice about how to proceed with my research!
Tags: Anti-Slavery, Gest Fellows, Quakers, Slavery