Benjamin Lay, the Quaker Comet

Benjamin Lay was 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 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Several times in previous episodes we have talked about the
role of Quakers, who are also called Friends in the

(00:23):
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 Leigh was a
Quaker and our 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

(00:47):
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
visible and memorable way. In the words of Robert's Vox,
who wrote a brief biography of Late in the nineteenth century, quote,
if the comparison be admissible, he appeared rather like the comet,

(01:12):
which threatens, in its irregular course the destruction of the
world's near which it passes. Then as one of those
tranquil orbs which hold their accustomed place and dispensed their
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

(01:33):
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
disowned Quake. Yes, like who's number two. He was also
the last Quaker known to be disowned for advocating against

(01:56):
slavery and for the abolition of slavery. So he was
not the only person to be disowned, but he was
disowned a lot the most last owned for this reason.
Benjamin Lay was born in Essex County, England on April two.
His parents, William and Prudence Ley, were of course Quakers,
as were his grandparents, and Benjamin's father had a small farm,

(02:18):
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 liked to call himself just a just a poor,
illiterate sailor, but 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.

(02:41):
This is something he seems to have really dearly loved,
but his time as a shepherd was temporary. Eventually he
was apprenticed to a glovemaker, 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
that can understand if it's not for you, it's really

(03:01):
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 farm and he was giving that up by
becoming a sailor instead. He also had caposis, or an
excessive front to back curvature of the spine, as well
as some form of dwarfism, and this would have made

(03:23):
some of the work on a ship farm or challenging
for him, but it also would have allowed him to
maneuver into tight spaces and through the rigging in the
ways that 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,

(03:44):
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 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

(04:06):
of Deptford, England. Sarah had become a Quaker in her youth,
and by seventeen twelve she was an approved minister. Sarah's
late father 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 kiphosis and Dwarfism, and in their life together
people sometimes commented on how much they resembled each other.

(04:30):
Benjamin himself described them as quote being pretty much alike
in stature and other ways. In seventeen sixteen, when he
was thirty 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

(04:51):
member in good standing. But Benjamin had made some waves
in his home congregation in London, which was Devonshire House
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 movements ideals,

(05:14):
it didn't have any sort of hierarchy. Early Quakers also
spoke out against established churches and their leaders, including during services,
but by the time Benjamin Lake came along, the Religious
Society of Friends had become much more conservative. Speaking out
against ministers and elders and weighty friends, which is a

(05:34):
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,
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

(05:56):
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,
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

(06:18):
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
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

(06:39):
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 like, he's not in trouble, but
he is a sas pants. Yeah, and it's possible that

(06:59):
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 thoughts. 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
upstart at heart. Once he got back to England with
that somewhat reluctant approval, Benjamin continued to criticize ministers and

(07:23):
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 to
the London Quarterly Meeting, which investigated the situation and said
that while it didn't approve of his behavior, it also

(07:44):
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 It said something to the
effect that he could it couldn't consider him part of
their number. That meant that he was allowed to still
worship there, but he wasn't considered a member in good standing,

(08:05):
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 to get into their time there after. We first
paused for a little sponsor break. When Benjamin and Sarah

(08:32):
Lay got to Barbados, Benjamin established himself as a merchant
with a small shop that was stocked with provisions that
he'd 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 had punished them
with a lash, which was a pretty common punishment for
theft at the time. But soon Lay realized that the

(08:55):
enslaved people who were stealing from his store were driven
to it by absolutely 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

(09:16):
ministry for the enslaved people of Barbados. They fed as
many as they could with 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,

(09:38):
the Lays quickly learned that conditions in Barbados were really horrific.
They repeatedly witnessed people 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 him man hanging

(10:01):
in Benjamin's words quote stark, naked, trembling and shivering with
such a flood of blood under him, that's 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 influence not only

(10:25):
Benjamin Lay's views on slavery, but also his views on
Africans and people 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 believed that all people
were equal, later writing, for example, quote the many hundreds
of thousands that are now in slavery, were they at

(10:47):
liberty as we are, had the same education, learning conversation books,
sweet communion, and our religious assemblies. I believe many of
them would exceed many of their tyrant masters in pie.
The 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

(11:10):
is death. One of the other things that gets pointed
out about his writing a lot is that there were
a lot of 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

(11:33):
and Benjamin only stayed in Barbados for about a year
and a half. 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

(11:56):
re established his 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 Rouse 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

(12:17):
a notice from a meeting about his misbehavior, and Benjamin
through 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

(12:40):
Benjamin 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 who be gone for a long time.

(13:01):
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

(13:23):
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 a Benjamin's behavior didn't draw any of this
kind of notice, or he might have gone traveling her

(13:46):
with her 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 he wanted it to follow Quaker ideals.

(14:09):
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 the Pennsylvania
they meeted a certificate from a Quaker meeting in England.

(14:31):
Colchester Monthly Meeting, maybe 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 three, seventeen thirty one. Devonshire House sent a letter
to Colchester Monthly Meeting clearing Benjamin of wrongdoing. Colchester Monthly

(14:53):
Meeting received Benjamin as a member and issued the certificate
for him to move to Pennsylvania. Mean while the cultures
are two weeks meetings 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. It's it's very ninth grade drama.

(15:15):
And so what it is? Do you like? Benjamin? Yes?
Box notebox um. 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, in spite of
everything that they had imagined about Penn's Holy Experiment and

(15:38):
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 even higher. Rather
than advocating the abolition of slavery, the religious Society of

(16:01):
Friends was more likely to advocate treating enslaved people humanely
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. He also
met other abolitionists, including fellow Quaker Ralph Sandiford, who by

(16:22):
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. Sandofford
died in seventeen thirty three, so when Leigh met him
it was towards the end of his life. After a
couple of years of this, Benjamin and Sarah decided to
move to Abington, about fifteen miles north of Philadelphia, and

(16:44):
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 a shipwreck together. But when the
Lace tried to get their certificate from Philadelphia so they
could join a meeting in Abington, Robert Jordan Jr. Objected,
arguing that because of all of the conflict back in England,

(17:05):
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 seems to have thought that
Jordan's treatment of the two of them contributed to it,

(17:25):
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 things over with the various

(17:46):
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.

(18:07):
Some of the chronology of Benjamin lays 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 Cynic philosophers, particularly Diogenes. If you need

(18:29):
a refresher on that, we just reran 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 ascetic, minimal existence. Lay started living
in a cave in Abington, which was spacious enough that
he had an extensive library there. It was also big

(18:50):
enough for a spinning wheel, which he used to spin flax.
He made all of his own clothes from undyed to
linen because he didn't want to wear any material that
harmed animal or was connected to slavery. He would use
leather from animals that had died naturally, but he would
not use it from ones that had been slaughtered or hunted.
Lay had also become a strict vegetarian, although he did

(19:11):
drink milk and he ate honey that was made by
bees that he raised himself, taking care not the harmony
of them when he harvested it. He didn't drink tea
because of the abuses and 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 exploit the labor of horses.

(19:33):
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 mud
so that the whole congregation had to step over him
as they left. On another occasion, he stood outside the

(19:55):
meeting house 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 in

(20:15):
the tobacco industry and tobacco's unwholesome effects on health, Ley
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 conditions

(20:37):
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. Lay 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 in others it's a daughter. One

(20:59):
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

(21:21):
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, Lay 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, Benjamin Lay is

(21:44):
putting the rest of us to shame completely. U Lay's
most famous anti slavery demonstration took place at the Philadelphia
Yearly Meeting on September ninety eight. This was an annual
meeting of all the Philadelphia area Quaker meetings held in Burlington,
New Jersey. Lay walked about twenty miles to get there,
wearing a military uniform with a sword belted to his

(22:06):
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 innocent captives undergo in their state

(22:29):
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 professed to do unto all men
as you would they should do unto you. And yet,

(22:50):
in direct opposition to every principle of reason, humanity, and religion,
you were forcibly retaining your fellow men from one generation
to another 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 the ground, and then went on, quote, it

(23:11):
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 enslaved their fellow creatures. So
then he drew the sword, stabbed it through the book

(23:33):
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. Uh. These demonstrations unsurprisingly angered the slave owning
members of the Quaker community. They were personally offended, and

(23:54):
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 overseers of the press, who were supposed

(24:17):
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 apost dates pretending to lay
claim to the pure and holy Christian religion of what
congregations soever, but especially in their ministers, by whose examples

(24:40):
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 we're
it's can set forth or can be declared of by

(25:02):
men or 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. Benjamin Lay. That was

(25:25):
the title name at the end, Pussy. 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 dot apostates. You know you can't blame
anyone for that abbrevious No, you really can't. This book

(25:45):
was really scathing in its discussion of slavery and of
slave owners, especially those who claim to be people of faith.
Here is 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, just in

(26:08):
their dealings, temperate in their lives, visiting of the sick,
sympathizing with the afflicted embody or mind, very religious, seemingly
an 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 devil's purpose,

(26:29):
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. 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 were also snippets from

(26:52):
Lay's own life, kind of little autobiographical sketches, including references
to that whole dispute with cultister twice weekly meeting. There
are also selections from other works that he found 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, it doesn't read as

(27:14):
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 one topic to another.

(27:35):
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 Ley
was not approved to have it published, and he knew
that it was kind of a disjointed miss Franklin had
even pointed that out to Ley, who told him that
it didn't matter and to print it in whatever order

(27:56):
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 Dr 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 with slave owners

(28:17):
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 tracks. Franklin's views may

(28:41):
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 is probably done
like not with Benjamin Lay sitting for a portrait doesn't
seem like a thing he ever would have done. Was

(29:02):
probably 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 as an abolitionist. Instead, it
shows Lay holding a book labeled try On on Happiness,
which was a reference to the Way to Health, Long
Life and Happiness, or a Discourse on Temperance and the

(29:24):
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 Berry demonstration and the publication of the book,
the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting disowned Benjamin Lay on September seven,

(29:49):
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
or thought 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 obstinate person,
one who slights the advice of friends, imposes on them

(30:12):
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 was like a
just to be safe, prophylactic disowning. I guess. Yet the
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting also took out advertisements denouncing Lay's book,
saying it quote contains gross abuses, not only against some

(30:35):
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 issues as well,
including denouncing the death penalty. He also visited Quaker schools

(30:55):
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 Meeting had decided
to start disowning members who were part of the slave trade.

(31:18):
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 annual meetings followed from there.
Because he had made some money during his lifetime but

(31:39):
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. 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

(32:02):
asked a friend to arrange for his body to be
cremated and his ashes thrown into the sea, but creation
was not really practiced among Quakers at that point, and
his friend refused. For a few decades after his death,
Benjamin Lake continued to be well known, especially in the
area where he lived. In the words of Benjamin Rush
we mentioned earlier, these were written in seventeen quote. There

(32:23):
was a time when this celebrated Christian philosopher was familiar
to every man, woman, and to nearly every child in Pennsylvania.
Lay was particularly remembered among abolitionists, but eventually he seemed
to just disappear 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

(32:45):
later abolitionists. The erasure was widespread enough that when Dave Wormling,
a caretaker at Abington Meeting House, found an etching of
Lay in the nineteen nineties, he didn't know who it was,
neither did any of the older members Wormling asked about it.
It remained a mystery until Marcus Rhdeicker visited the meeting
house in while researching his book The Fearless Benjamin Lay,

(33:09):
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 portularly long, if folks
are interested in picking it up. Rhedeicker's work brought new
attention to Benjamin Lay's life and work, and based on
his research, Hdeker also encouraged Quaker congregations to revisit those

(33:29):
past decisions to disown him. Eventually, the four congregations that
had disowned Lay or their successors issued statements about it, and,
as one example, on November twelveen 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

(33:51):
willingness to repeatedly speak his messages of truth to a
society that was in denial about the evils of slavery.
We acknowledge that Benjamin Lay used radical 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,

(34:12):
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 we may not
reinstate membership for someone who is deceased, we recognize Benjamin
Lay as a friend of the truth and as being
in unity with the spirit of our Abington Monthly Meeting.

(34:34):
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 Sarah and Benjamin Lay
was placed in the Abington Burial Ground on Apeen and
a historical marker. A state historical marker was dedicated on

(34:54):
September two, so he has become a little more well
known over the last couple of years. I love it.
Do you have a little bit of listener mail? I do.
We got emails from a couple of folks in the
same topic. This first one is from Daniel. Daniel says,
good day, I love your podcasts. I'm currently an active
duty officer with the U. S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps

(35:17):
stationed abroad. CBS fall within the CEC's command, and I
have never heard of the incident mentioned regarding the nine
race riots in Guam. I'm an avid history buff and
have never come across this in my researchers scene it
mentioned in the US NAVYCB Museum. What you mentioned may
have been the Aganya Race riots and it involved the

(35:38):
third Marine Division. If CBS were involved, I would love
to hear more about the incident. I'll start asking around
and maybe some of my salty chiefs have more knowledge
on the confrontation. Very respectfully sounds damn, sounds more formally
than that, but privacy, I will just say Dan and
then The other note was from Catherine, and Catherine says,
Dear Tracy and Holly, thanks a lot for your show.

(35:59):
It's ter thick. I have one quick question for you.
In the July seventeen show and the Port Chicago Disaster,
it mentions a riot on Guam involving CBS in nineteen
forty four. The comment was about twenty nine minutes and
thirty seconds into the podcast. Can you tell me where
I could learn more about this? I served as a
Navy CBE for many years and would like to learn
more about the event, but I couldn't tell which of

(36:20):
the resources to use. UH. By the way, there's a
great U. S. Navy SABE museum at the Naval Base
Ventura County just north of Malibu if you're ever in
that area. The history of the cebes or military engineering
itself would be a great topic to add to your
future shows list. Thanks a lot and keep up the
great work. Best Kate. So thank you Kate and Dan
for these questions to uh jump back to what we

(36:44):
said in the podcast. Um In the episode on the
Port Chicago disaster, we referenced a riot involving black Seabees
and white Marines on Guam in December of ninety four.
That's what we said in the podcast. So if you're
not familiar, CBS are Construction Battalion. Originally this was kind
of a nickname from the initials CB. Eventually did become

(37:04):
the formal name. So that was the a Gana Riot,
which was named after the town where part of it happened.
That town is now called Hagatna and it's the capital
of Guam. There had been ongoing violence in Guam leading
up to it, including an off duty white MP firing
on black men in the town and a white sailor
shooting and killing a black marine. There were forty three

(37:26):
black sailors who tried to invade the white marine barracks
on Christmas night nineteen and retaliation they were arrested. And
then there were also rumors of another incident in which
a black sailor had been killed by a white marine
and that was what tipped off this riot. So multiple
sources that we used for this episode referenced the riot
as part of the context report Chicago and for the

(37:48):
trials afterward and all of that, and some of them
used the name agan Near Riot and others didn't. Only
one of them describes the black serviceman involved as CBS,
and that was an essay by Charles W. Lemberg called
Blacks Versus Navy Blue the Mayor Island Mutiny Court Martial,
and that was published in the journal California History. Other
accounts that were part of the research didn't describe these

(38:10):
men as CBS, but they were also pretty vague and
contradictory about who the black servicemen were and what unit
they were with. This is surely info that does exist
concretely somewhere. It's just not something I could confirm leading
up to it. So it's possible that Walloenberg just made
an error when he described these men as cebes, or
that he conflated the Ghanya riots with something else, because

(38:32):
there were other things that went on with the black
Sebes in World War Two, including about a thousand black
Sebes who went on a hunger strike in March of
nineteen to protest discrimination and segregation, and uh nineteen black
Seebes who were dishonorably discharged in October of nineteen forty
three after they had reported racial discrimination. So that is

(38:55):
the whole story of attempting to clarify what we said
in the podcast. Um so thank you to both of
you are writing in about that. If you would like
to write to us about this or any other podcast
or a history podcasts at how stuff Works dot com.
And then we're all over social media at miss in History.
That is where you will find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
and Instagram. You can come to our website which is

(39:17):
missing history dot com and find show notes for all
the episodes Holly and I have done together and a
searchable archive of all the episodes ever and you can
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and rehever else you have podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of I Heart Radio's How

(39:37):
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