SYMHC Classics: Benjamin Lay

This 2019 episode covers Benjamin Lay, a Quaker and a radical abolitionist who lived in the period between when the Religious Society of Friends began and when it started formally banning slave ownership among its members.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. Not long ago, we read an email from
listener Miranda about Judith Sargent Murray, who was a Universalist
whose family had enslaved household servants, but as a denomination
Universalists are usually more associated with the abolition movement. I said,
this reminded me of Benjamin Lay, who was a Quaker

(00:24):
at a time before the Religious Society of Friends became
actively abolitionist, and was expelled from various Quaker meetings in
part for his vocal opposition to slavery, including by prominent
members of those meetings. We said at the time we
might run our episode on Benjamin Lay as a Saturday classic,

(00:44):
and here it is. The original came out on August
twenty first, twenty nineteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed
in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and Welcome

(01:05):
to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Several times in previous episodes we have talked about the
role of Quakers, who are also called Friends, in the
abolition of slavery. We haven't, though, really talked about the
Religious Society of Friends before it became such a visible
part in the movement for abolition. Benjamin Lay was a

(01:28):
Quaker and a radical abolitionist who lived in this period
between when the Religious Society of Friends started and when
it started formally banning slave ownership among its members. During
that time, there were actually a lot of Quaker slave owners,
especially among the more wealthy and more powerful members, and
Lay was incredibly outspoken about this issue in an incredibly

(01:52):
visible and memorable way. In the words of Robert's Vox,
who wrote a brief biography of Lay in the nineteenth century,
if the comparison be admissible, he appeared rather like the comet,
which threatens, in its irregular course the destruction of the
worlds near which it passes, than is one of those
tranquil orbs which hold their accustomed place and dispense their

(02:15):
light in the harmonious order of heaven. So because of
this comet like behavior and this advocacy, Benjamin Lay was
disowned from multiple Quaker meetings. He's been described as the
most frequently disowned Quaker of his time. We're going to
talk more about what that means and how that happened
in a bit, and this is who we are talking
about today. I like that there's a superlative of most

(02:38):
disowned Quake Yes, like Who's number two. He was also
the last Quaker known to be disowned for advocating against
slavery and for the abolition of slavery, So he was
not the only person to be disowned, but he was
disowned a lot. He's the most last owned for this reason.

(02:59):
Benjamin Lay He was born in Essex County, England, on
April twenty sixth, sixteen eighty two. His parents, William and
Prudence Lay, were of course Quakers, as were his grandparents,
and Benjamin's father had a small farm, but his family
did not have a lot of money, so Benjamin didn't
really have much of a formal education. He did a
lot of self study later in his life, though he

(03:20):
liked to call himself just a poor, illiterate sailor. Eventually
he was very widely and well read, and when he
was in his teens, Benjamin went to live on his
brother's farm, where he worked as a shepherd. This is
something he seems to have really dearly loved, but his
time as a shepherd was temporary. Eventually he was apprenticed

(03:41):
to a glove maker, and that was something he did
not enjoy at all. So, when he was about twenty
one years old, he left and he went to London
to become a sailor instead. Having made some gloves, I
can understand if it's not for you, it's really not free.
He did not like it one bit. This was an
interesting choice for him to have made this move to
become a sailor. He was expected to inherit a family

(04:04):
farm and he was giving that up by becoming a
sailor instead. He also had cayphosis, or an excessive front
to back curvature of the spine, as well as some
form of dwarfism, and this would have made some of
the work on a ship far more challenging for him.
But it also would have allowed him to maneuver into
tight spaces and through the rigging in the ways that

(04:26):
larger men really couldn't lay. Was a sailor for about
twelve years, and during that time when he wasn't at sea,
he usually lived in London. He also spent some time
in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, visiting various sites
that had been mentioned in the Bible. Otherwise, we don't
have a whole lot of detail about these years at sea,
but it is where Lay started learning about the horrors

(04:47):
of the transatlantic slave trade. He heard these stories from
men who had either worked on slave ships themselves or
had heard about it from other sailors. At some point
during these years, Lay met Sarah Smith of Debtford, England.
Sarah had become a Quaker in her youth, and by
seventeen twelve she was an approved minister. Sarah's late father

(05:07):
had been a plasterer, and if her mother was still
living when she and Benjamin met, she had died by
the time that they married. Like Benjamin, Sarah had both
Cayphosis and Dwarfism, and in their life together people sometimes
commented on how much they resembled each other. Benjamin himself
described them as quote being pretty much alike in stature
and other ways. In seventeen sixteen, when he was thirty

(05:31):
four and she was four or five years older, Benjamin
started trying to get the necessary permissions to marry Sarah,
but this presented a problem. In order to marry within
the religious society of Friends, you had to be a
member in good standing. But Benjamin had made some waves
in his home congregation in London, which was Devonshire House.

(05:51):
Monthly meeting. When the Quaker movement was very first evolving
in Britain in the mid sixteen hundreds, a lot of
the time it was really confrontational. One of the movement's
core beliefs was that each person could have a direct
relationship with God, and in terms of the movement's ideals,
it didn't have any sort of hierarchy. Early Quakers also
spoke out against established churches and their leaders, including during services,

(06:16):
but by the time Benjamin Lay came along, the Religious
Society of Friends had become much more conservative, speaking out
against ministers and elders and weighty friends, which as a
term for influential Quakers, was just not done. Benjamin did it,
though we don't know what exactly he had been criticizing
in Devonshire. He had a particular dislike for vanity, pride

(06:39):
and covetousness, and he also didn't like preaching that seemed
like the minister's own words rather than the word of God.
Based on later incidents that were more well documented, it
could have been any number of things, but whatever it was,
he was in enough trouble over it that he did
not go directly to Devonshire House Monthly meeting to ask
for the certificate that he needed to marry his beloved. Instead,

(07:02):
he worked on a ship that crossed the Atlantic Ocean,
and in Salem, Massachusetts, he went to the local Quaker
meeting house there and said that he wanted to marry
Sarah Smith of Deptford. In seventeen seventeen, the Salem Congregation
wrote to Devonshire House. After some discussion, Devonshire House wrote
back that Benjamin was quote free and clear from all

(07:23):
persons here relating to marriage, and also free and clear
of debts so far as we know. But their letter
went on to say that they thought Benjamin was quote
convinced of the truth, but for want of keeping low
and humble in his mind, hath by an indiscreet zeal,
been too forward to appear in our public meetings, to
the uneasiness of friends. Look, he's not in trouble, but

(07:46):
he is a SaaS pants. Yeah, and it's possible that
he may have been criticizing people who who were slave
owners at this point. That seems to have come along
much later into his line of thought. So I think
this was more like if he didn't like your face,
do you would tell you that he didn't like your face.
If he didn't like your preaching, same deal. He's an

(08:08):
upstart at heart. Once he got back to England with
that somewhat reluctant approval, Benjamin continued to criticize ministers and
others at Devonshire House and at other Quaker meetings in
and around London, where he also worshiped. He roused enough
rabble the Devonshire House refused to give him the formal
certificate that he needed for marriage. He appealed their refusal

(08:30):
to the London Quarterly Meeting, which investigated the situation and
said that while it didn't approve of his behavior, it
also did not approve of Devonshire House withholding his certificate.
So although Devonshire House Monthly Meeting did issue the certificate,
it also ultimately disowned Benjamin. It said something to the
effect that couldn't consider him part of their number. That

(08:52):
meant that he was allowed to still worship there, but
he wasn't considered a member in good standing, and he
wasn't allowed to take part in business meetings. Benjamin and
Sarah did finally marry in Deptford on July tenth, seventeen eighteen.
They left London shortly thereafter and moved to Barbados, which
was also home to a Quaker community, and we're going

(09:13):
to get into their time there after. We first paused
for a little sponsor break. When Benjamin and Sarah Lay
got to Barbados, Benjamin established himself as a merchant with
a small shop that was stocked with provisions that he'd

(09:35):
bought before leaving England. Before long, they experienced a series
of small thefts from this store, and if Benjamin was
able to catch the perpetrator, he'd punish them with a lash,
which was a pretty common punishment for theft at the time.
But soon Lay realized that the enslaved people who were
stealing from his store were driven to it by absolutely

(09:56):
desperate circumstances. They were either stealing food because they were starving,
or they were stealing items that they could sell or
trade for food. So upon this revelation, Benjamin was full
of remorse for what he had done, and he and
Sarah set up an informal ministry for the enslaved people
of Barbados. They fed as many as they could with

(10:16):
what they had, although it was often spoiled in the
Caribbean heat, and they established a Sunday School, where Benjamin
both taught and counseled enslaved people and listened to them
as they talked about their own lives and experiences. So
by listening to the words of the people around them
and by their own observations, the Lays quickly learned that
conditions in Barbados were really horrific. They repeatedly witnessed people

(10:40):
collapsing from exhaustion and overwork. One enslaved man that Benjamin knew,
took his own life rather than continuing to be subjected
to regular beatings. At one point, Sarah was going to
visit another Quaker who was living nearby, and on our
way there she found a man hanging, in Benjamin's words
quote stark naked, trembling and shivering, with such a flood

(11:02):
of blood under him that so surprised the little woman
she could scarce contain. So when Sarah got to the
house the people she was visiting, she asked them what
was going on, and they told her that this man
was being punished for quote absconding. A day or two,
this experience in Barbados influenced not only Benjamin Lay's views
on slavery, but also his views on Africans and people

(11:25):
of African descent in general. A lot of the other
white abolitionists that we have talked about on the show
argued that slavery was immoral, but they were also racist.
But Lay really believes that all people were equal, later writing,
for example, quote the many hundreds of thousands that are
now in slavery, were they at liberty as we are
had the same education, learning conversation books, sweet communion, and

(11:49):
our religious assemblies. I believe many of them would exceed
many of their tyrant masters in piety, virtue, and godliness,
and their bright genius which I know they have, would
be enlivened for I have conversed with many of them.
For liberty is life and slavery is death. Yeah. One
of the other things that gets pointed out about his
writing a lot is that there were a lot of

(12:12):
abolitionists that still talked about Africans and people of African
descent as savages, and he reserved that kind of language
for the people who owned slaves. He never used that
sort of language about people who were enslaved or people
who were of African descent. So Sarah and Benjamin only
stayed in Barbados for about a year and a half.

(12:32):
Their work with the enslaved population really, of course, drew
the ire of the slave owning community. They faced harassment
and threats over it. Sarah was also afraid that if
they stayed there they would eventually become desensitized to what
they were seeing, so in seventeen twenty they went back
to London, where Benjamin seems to have re established his

(12:52):
relationship with the Devonshire House Monthly Meeting. But soon Benjamin
was once again speaking out against other Quakers. In September
seventeen twenty, a complaint was recorded that he had disturbed
Zachary Routh in his public testimony and also had called
him a drunkard and a sinner. After some back and forth,
a man named Joseph Norris brought Benjamin a notice from

(13:14):
a meeting about his misbehavior, and Benjamin threw that notice
out the window. He was disowned for a second time,
and then he and Sarah moved to Colchester, which is
northeast of London. And Colchester, Benjamin had a long, confusing
and frankly pretty petty seeming dispute with the Colchester two
weeks meeting. This dispute went on for years, with Benjamin

(13:36):
criticizing people and then the meeting demanding that he apologized,
and then he would double down or refuse to apologize
or give kind of a non apology. Sometimes it seems
as though Sarah tried to smooth things over here, especially
at various times she was preparing to travel without him
as a minister and to be gone for a long time.

(13:57):
She was concerned about his being isolated from his religious
community while she was gone. The Colchester Two Weeks Meeting
wanted to disown Benjamin, but couldn't because he was still
disowned from Devonshire House Monthly Meeting. He'd never formally become
a member of Colchester Two Weeks Meeting. And then Benjamin
and Sarah started attending a different Colchester meeting, the Colchester

(14:19):
Monthly Meeting, which added another layer of strife thanks to
an apparent power struggle between those two different Colchester meetings.
In the middle of all this dispute, Benjamin and Sarah
disappear from the record for about three years. It's possible
that they moved somewhere else and became part of a
congregation where Benjamin's behavior didn't draw any of this kind
of notice or he might have gone traveling with her

(14:42):
while she worked as a minister. Regardless, in seventeen twenty nine,
they were back in Colchester trying to make arrangements to
immigrate to Pennsylvania. The Colony of Pennsylvania had been founded
by William Penn in sixteen eighty one in part to
be a home for Quakers who were facing violence and
persecution in Europe. He called it his Holy Experiment, and

(15:03):
he wanted it to follow Quaker ideals. Penn wanted fair
treatment of the native people, no military, and a government
that ran on principles of freedom, including religious liberty, access
to education, and universal suffrage for men. So this was
an obvious place for the Lays to want to move.
But once again, to immigrate to Pennsylvania, they needed a

(15:24):
certificate from a Quaker meeting in England. Colchester Monthly Meeting
may be motivated by the idea of Benjamin Lay living
somewhere else, agreed to provide the certificate if Benjamin made
amends with Devonshire House, which he did on November third,
seventeen thirty one. Devonshire House sent a letter to Colchester

(15:45):
Monthly Meeting clearing Benjamin of wrongdoing Colchester Monthly Meeting received
Benjamin as a member and issued the certificate for him
to move to Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, the Colchester two weeks Meeting,
still very mad at him, wrote letters ahead of him,
warning Quakers in Pennsylvania about what they were in for.
I'm wildly abused by all of the letters and the like.

(16:08):
It's very ninth grade drama, and somewhat it is. Do
you like, Benjamin? Yes? Box, no box. When the Lays
got to Philadelphia, Benjamin opened a bookshop specializing in books
by Quakers, as well as psalters, Bibles, and classical works
of literature. But he and Sarah were dismayed to discover that,

(16:30):
in spite of everything that they had imagined about Penn's
Holy Experiment and its dedication to Quaker ideals, slavery was
still practiced in the colony. About ten percent of the
population of Philadelphia was enslaved, and about half the membership
of the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting owned slaves. Among the wealthiest
and most powerful friends in the congregation that number was

(16:52):
even higher. Rather than advocating the abolition of slavery, the
religious Society of Friends was more likely to advocate treating
enslaved people humanly, or freeing people after a certain number
of years rather than enslaving them and all their descendants
for life. Benjamin started criticizing slavery and slave owners right away.

(17:13):
He also met other abolitionists, including fellow Quaker Ralph Sandeford,
who by that point was in very poor physical and
mental health, in part due to being harassed by other
Quakers over his abolitionist beliefs, which had gone on for years.
Sanderford died in seventeen thirty three, so when Ley met
him it was toward the end of his life. After

(17:33):
a couple of years of this, Benjamin and Sarah decided
to move to Abington, about fifteen miles north of Philadelphia,
and they may have chosen this location because Susannah Morris
lived there. She and Sarah were friends and they had
traveled together as ministers, including surviving as shipwreck together. But
when the Lays tried to get their certificate from Philadelphia

(17:53):
so they could join a meeting in Abington, Robert Jordan
Junior objected, arguing that because of all of the content,
like back in England, Benjamin's membership in Philadelphia was not
authorized in the first place. Not long after they moved
to Abington, Sarah Lay died at the age of about
fifty eight. Her cause of death is unknown, it does
seem to have been unexpected and pretty sudden. Benjamin also

(18:17):
seems to have thought that Jordan's treatment of the two
of them contributed to it, maybe by causing them both
a lot of stress. A notice from the Abington Monthly
Meeting mentioned Sarah's quote gift of ministry and her travels
through England, Scotland and Ireland and some parts of the
continent as a minister. It's very likely that Sarah had
been a tempering influence in Benjamin's life, not just smoothing

(18:40):
things over with the various Quaker meetings that they were
part of, but also in reigning in his more radical impulses.
And without her, he dedicated himself to aggressively speaking out
against slavery. And we're going to get to that after
we have another sponsor break. Some of the chronology of

(19:06):
Benjamin Lay's life is a little bit fuzzy, so it's
possible that some of the things we're about to talk
about happened before his wife died. Even if that's the case, though,
after Sarah's death Benjamin became known as an increasingly eccentric figure.
He was heavily influenced by the Cenic philosophers, particularly Diogenes.

(19:26):
If you need a refresher on that, we just re
ran our episode on him as a Saturday classic. But
in general, the Cynics were in favor of living with nature,
abandoning social conventions, and living in an acetic, minimal existence.
Lay started living in a cave in Abington, which was
spacious enough that he had an extensive library there. It

(19:46):
was also big enough for a spinning wheel, which he
used to spin flax. He made all of his own
clothes from undyed toe linen because he didn't want to
wear any material that harmed animals or was connected to slavery.
He would use other from animals that had died naturally,
but he would not use it from ones that had
been slaughtered or hunted. Ley had also become a strict vegetarian,

(20:08):
although he did drink milk and he ate honey that
was made by bees that he raised himself, taking care
not to harm any of them when he harvested it.
He didn't drink tea because of the abuses in the
tea industry in Asia, and he didn't eat sugar because
it was grown, harvested, and processed by enslaved Africans. He
also went everywhere on foot because he didn't want to

(20:28):
exploit the labor of horses. He started publicly condemning slave owners,
especially Quaker slave owners, including during meetings, and he became
increasingly dramatic in his protests. After interrupting someone in a meeting,
he was forcibly carried out into the rain, and he
lay in the MUDs so that the whole congregation had
to step over him as they left. On another occasion,

(20:51):
he stood outside the meetinghouse in the snow with one
boot off and the leg of his pants rolled up.
When people asked what he was doing, or said that
he should go inside because he might get sick, he answered, quote,
you pretend compassion for me, but you do not feel
for the poor slaves in the field who go all
winter half clad. To protest the use of slave labor

(21:12):
in the tobacco industry and tobacco's unwholesome effects on health,
Lay took three pipes to an annual Quaker meeting, and
he smashed each of them, one among the ministers, one
among the women, and one among the men, a lot
of Quaker congregations at that point, separated by gender. He
did a similar demonstration against the tea industry, protesting the

(21:34):
conditions in the tea and sugar industries and the luxury
that was associated with tea, by smashing his late wife's
tea set with a hammer in a public square. Ley
also tried to convince some neighbors to free a young
girl that they were enslaving as a household servant. He
had also made friends with their child. In some accounts
this was a son, and others it's a daughter. One

(21:56):
day he convinced this child to come stay with him
for the afternoon, and when he saw the parents that evening,
distraught over their missing child, he said, quote, your child
is safe in my house, and now you may conceive
of the sorrow you inflict upon the parents of the
Negro girl you hold in slavery, for she was torn
from them by avarice. At one point, Lay traveled to

(22:18):
Philadelphia to visit another Quaker family. He arrived as they
were having breakfast, and he asked them whether the person
who was serving their meal was enslaved. When they answered
that yes, he was, Ley said quote, then I will
not share with THEE in the fruits of thy unrighteousness.
And he left. There's so many points in his story
where I want to yell right on, yea, Benjamin Lay

(22:41):
is putting the rest of us to shame completely. Ley's
most famous anti slavery demonstration took place at the Philadelphia
Yearly Meeting on September nineteenth, seventeen thirty eight. This was
an annual meeting of all the Philadelphia area Quaker meetings
held in Burlington, New Jersey. Lay walked about twenty minsles
to get there, wearing a military uniform with a sword

(23:03):
belted to his hip under an overcoat. He also carried
a hollowed out book in which was concealed a bladder
filled with bright red pokeberry juice. During this meeting, he
stood up and said, quote, Oh, all you Negro masters
who are contentedly holding your fellow creatures in a state
of slavery during life, well knowing the cruel sufferings those

(23:24):
innocent captives undergo in their state of bondage, both in
these North American colonies and in the West India Islands,
you must know they are not made slaves by any
direct law but are held by an arbitrary and self
interested custom in which you participate, and especially you, who
profess to do unto all men as you would they

(23:45):
should do unto you. And yet, in direct opposition to
every principle of reason, humanity, and religion, you are forcibly
retaining your fellow men from one generation to another in
a state of unconditional servitude. You might as well throw
off the plain coat as I do. He unbuttoned the
one button of his coat and let it fall on

(24:06):
the ground, and then went on quote, it would be
as justifiable in the sight of the Almighty, who beholds
and respects all nations and colors of men with an
equal regard, if you should thrust a sword through their
hearts as I do through this book. In some accounts
he also said, thus shall God shed the blood of
those persons who enslave their fellow creatures. So then he

(24:28):
drew the sword, stabbed it through the book and the
bladder that was concealed inside of it, let the fake
blood drip out of it, and flung drops of it
all over the slave owners who were around him. He
was like an early performance artist. I kind of love it.
These demonstrations unsurprisingly angered these slave owning members of the

(24:48):
Quaker community. They were personally offended, and his aggressive confrontations
ran against the Quaker values of peace and unity. In
that Pokeberry juice demonstration, Lay had also walked into a
Pacifist congregation wearing a military uniform and carrying a weapon.
On top of all that, in seventeen thirty eight, Lay
also published a book without the authorization of the church's

(25:12):
overseers of the press, who were supposed to approve all
published material by Quakers. This book was called and Just
Buckle Up, because this is I think the longest title
we've ever read. All slave keepers that keep the innocent
in bondage, apostates pretending to lay claim to the pure
and holy Christian religion of what congregations soever, but especially

(25:35):
in their ministers, by whose examples the filthy leprosy and
apostasy is spread far and near. It is a notorious
sin which many of the true friends of Christ and
His pure Truth, called Quakers, has been for many years
and still are concerned to write and bear testimony against,
as a practice so gross and hurtful to religion and
destructive to government. Beyond what words can set forth or

(25:58):
can be declared of by manner aim angels, and yet
lived by ministers and magistrates in America. The leaders of
the people caused them to air written for a general
service by him that truly and sincerely desires the present
and eternal welfare and happiness of all mankind, all the
world over, of all colors and nations as his own soul.

(26:20):
Benjamin Lay. That was the title name of Band Pissy.
Most historians referencing this work just call it all slave
keepers that keep the innocent and bondage apostates, or even
just all slave keepers dot dot apostates. You know you
can't blame anyone for that abbreviation. No, you really can't.

(26:42):
This book was really scathing in its discussion of slavery
and of slave owners, especially those who claim to be
people of faith. Here's a passage quote, Now, dear friends,
behold a mystery these ministers that be slave keepers and
are in such very great repute, Such eminent preachers, given
to hospitality, charitable to the poor, loving to their neighbors,

(27:05):
just in their dealings, temperate in their lives, visiting of
the sick, sympathizing with the afflicted in body or mind,
very religious, seemingly and extraordinary, devout and demure, and in short,
strictly exact in all their decorums except slave keeping. These
these be the men and the women too for the

(27:25):
devil's purpose, and are the choicest treasure the devil can
or has to bring out of his lazaretto to establish
slave keeping. By these satan works wonders many ways. Yeah,
so even if you are that great of a person,
you are owning slaves, You are doing the devil's work.
Per Benjamin Lay, this book wasn't just about slavery. There

(27:48):
were also snippets for Malay's own life, kind of little
autobiographical sketches, including references to that whole dispute with Colchester
twice weekly meeting. There are also selections from other works
that he found me meaningful in some way, including a
couple of chapters of the Book of Revelation along with
Lay's commentary, and a chunk of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Basically,

(28:09):
it doesn't read as though Lay sat down intending to
write a book. It's more like he wrote things from
time to time as different ideas came into his mind,
without really a cohesive through line through all of it.
The writing style you might conclude based on the title
is also pretty rambling, even when it's not jumping from

(28:31):
one topic to another. Lay's friend, Benjamin Franklin, published the book.
Although Franklin left his name off the title page in
the spot where the publisher's name would normally go. Franklin
knew that Lay was not approved to have it published,
and he knew that it was kind of a disjointed mess.
Franklin had even pointed that out to Lay, who told
him that it didn't matter and to print it in

(28:52):
whatever order that he thought best. In the words of
the third Benjamin in this paragraph, physician and educator Benjamin
Rush quote, even the address and skill of doctor Franklin
were not sufficient to connect its different parts together so
as to render it an agreeable or useful work. As
a side note, although Benjamin Lay often refused to associate

(29:13):
with slave owners in any way, he seems to have
made an exception for Benjamin Franklin. Franklin later did become
part of the movement for abolition, but when he was
working on Lay's book, he was also enslaving at least
two people. Franklin's own views on slavery at the time,
may have been another reason why he left his name
off of the book, although he did print other abolitionist tracts.

(29:37):
Franklin's views may have also influenced the visual representations of
Benjamin Lay that we have today. Most of them come
from a portrait that was done by William Williams that
was commissioned for Benjamin Franklin by his wife Deborah. This
was probably done like not with Benjamin Lay sitting for
a portrait that doesn't seem like a thing he ever

(29:58):
would have done. Was. William Williams was probably familiar with
Benjamin Lay from having seen him around town, but this
portrait has no indication of Lay's work as an abolitionist. Instead,
it shows Lay holding a book labeled Tryon on Happiness,
which was a reference to the Way to Health, long
Life and Happiness, or a Discourse on Temperance and the

(30:21):
Particular Nature of all Things Requisite for the Life of
Man by Thomas Tryon. We do know that Benjamin Lay
loved this book and apparently carried it with him a
lot of the time, but this was not nearly as
big of a part of his life as his abolitionist work.
After the poke Bury demonstration and the publication of the book.
The Philadelphia Monthly Meeting disowned Benjamin Lay on September twenty sixth,

(30:44):
seventeen thirty seven, saying that the certificate that he had
presented from Colchester when joining the church had been quote
irregularly maintained that his conduct was disorderly, and that quote
we have therefore sought fit to give public notice that
we do not esteem the said Benjamin Lay to be
a member of our religious community, but a disorderly and

(31:05):
obstinate person, one who slights the advice of friends, imposes
on them in his preaching, that he disregards the peace
of the church. The Abington Monthly Meeting disowned Lay as well,
even though he was not actually a member there. It
was like a just to be safe, prophylactic disowning. I
guess yeah. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting also took out advertisements

(31:26):
denouncing Lay's books, saying it quote contains gross abuses not
only against some of their members in particular, but against
the whole society. Even after being disowned from these congregations,
Lay continued to attend services and to speak and write
against slavery at every opportunity, and he did that for
the rest of his life. He spoke out on other

(31:47):
issues as well, including denouncing the death penalty. He also
visited Quaker schools and brought books with him to give
out his prizes. He also gave money charitably, although while
he gave money to poor people who needed it, he
criticized beggars who he thought were able to work. In
seventeen fifty eight, as Benjamin Lay's health was declining, a
friend visited him and told him that the Philadelphia Annual

(32:10):
Meeting had decided to start disowning members who were part
of the slave trade. Lay answered his friend that he
could now die at peace. He did die on February third,
seventeen fifty nine, at the age of seventy seven. Almost
twenty years later, in seventeen seventy six, the Philadelphia Annual
Meeting bands slave ownership among its members, and then other

(32:32):
annual meetings followed from there. Because he had made some
money during his lifetime but had spent almost nothing in
his last years, Benjamin Lay left behind in a state
that was divided up among family members and charitable institutions,
along with forty pounds to the Society of friends at
Abington for the care of poor children in the congregation.

(32:52):
He was buried in an unmarked grave at the Abington
Burial Ground, although the registry there did not list him
as a member. He had asked a friend to arrange
for his body to be cremated and his ashes thrown
into the sea, but cremation was not really practiced among
Quakers at that point, and his friend refused. For a
few decades after his death, Benjamin Lay continued to be

(33:12):
well known, especially in the area where he lived. In
the words of Benjamin Rush we mentioned earlier, these were
written in seventeen ninety quote, there was a time when
this celebrated Christian philosopher was familiar to every man woman,
in to nearly every child in Pennsylvania. Lay was particularly
remembered among abolitionists, but eventually he seemed to just disappear

(33:33):
from history, and the historians who did mention him often
dismissed him as kind of an eccentric crank, rather than
as somebody who paved the way for later abolitionists. The
erasure was widespread enough that when Dave Wermaling, a caretaker
at Abington Meetinghouse, found an etching of Lay, in the
nineteen nineties. He didn't know who it was, neither did

(33:55):
any of the older members Wrmaling asked about it. It
remained a mystery until Marcus Rehticker visited the meeting house
in twenty fourteen while researching his book The Fearless Benjamin Lay,
the Quaker dwarf who became the first revolutionary abolitionist. That
book was one of the sources for this episode. It
is very good and also not particularly long if folks

(34:15):
are interested in picking it up. Rehdticker's work brought new
attention to Benjamin Lay's life and work, and based on
his research, Rehticker also encouraged Quaker congregations to revisit those
past decisions to disown him. Eventually, the four congregations that
had disowned Lay or their successors issued statements about it,

(34:36):
and as one example, on November twelfth, twenty seventeen, the
Abington Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends issued
a statement that it quote recognizes Benjamin Lay's dedication to
equality and his willingness to repeatedly speak his messages of
truth to a society that was in denial about the
evils of slavery. We acknowledged that Benjamin Lay used radical

(34:57):
activism and his attempts to teach his peers to recognize
the equality before God of all people, regardless of race
or gender. He lived his life with integrity according to
his Quaker beliefs, and he called others, especially slave owners,
to accountability. The statement went on to say, quote, we
now recognize the truth behind Benjamin Lay's abolitionist efforts. Although

(35:20):
we may not reinstate membership for someone who is deceased,
we recognized Benjamin Lay as a friend of the truth
and as being in unity with the spirit of our
Abington Monthly Meeting. Yeah, the statements from the other congregations
that had disowned him during his life had very similar
tones and in some cases issued joint statements about it.
In addition to all of these statements, a stone commemorating

(35:43):
Sarah and Benjamin Lay was placed in the Abington Burial
Ground on April twenty first, twenty eighteen, and a historical
marker a state historical marker was dedicated on September twenty second,
twenty eighteen. So he has become a little more well
known over the last couple of years. We love it.

(36:04):
Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since
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(36:25):
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