Our Beloved Friend

Born into one of the wealthiest families in Philadelphia and raised and educated in that vital center of eighteenth-century American Quakerism, Anne Emlen Mifflin was a progressive force in early America. This detailed and engaging biography, which features Mifflin’s collected writings and selected correspondence, revives her legacy.

Anne grew up directly across the street from the Pennsylvania statehouse, where the Continental Congress was leading the War of Independence. A Quaker minister whose busy pen, agile mind, and untiring moral energy produced an extensive corpus of writings, Anne was an ardent abolitionist and social reformer decades before the establishment of women’s anti-slavery societies. And at a time when most Americans never ventured beyond their own village, hamlet, or farm, Anne journeyed thousands of miles. She traveled to settlements of Friends on the frontier and met with Native Americans in the rough country of northwestern Pennsylvania, New York, and Canada.

Our Beloved Friend provides a unique window onto the lives of Quakers during the pre-Revolutionary era, the establishment of the New Republic, and the War of 1812.

“An impressive work of seminal scholarship.”—Midwest Book Review

“Nash and Teipe’s thoroughly researched book enhances our knowledge of this female leader and her reform experience in early America.”—Janet Moore Lindman, Pennsylvania Heritage

“An impressively researched biography, Our Beloved Friend makes a case for the historical importance of Anne Emlen Mifflin on her own terms, as both a Public Friend and an activist. Her life offers important context for eighteenth-century ideas about and experiences of non-Quaker women. It is also a useful meditation on how ‘ordinary’ people navigated pivotal historical events as well as the moral and ethical complexities of early American society, economy, and politics.”—Sarah Crabtree, author of Holy Nation: The Transatlantic Quaker Ministry in an Age of Revolution

“Our Beloved Friend provides an example of a strong-willed and intellectually-engaged woman. The compelling narrative of Mifflin’s life is expertly presented and supported with extensive background and by her writings that include multiple genres, such as poetry, spiritual autobiography, travel narrative, diary entries, commonplace books, letters, and prose.”—Susan Imbarrato, author of Sarah Gray Cary from Boston to Grenada: Shifting Fortunes of an American Family, 1764-1826

Gary B. Nash was Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of numerous books, including Warner Mifflin: Unflinching Quaker Abolitionist, a biography of Anne Emlen Mifflin’s husband.

Emily M. Teipe is Professor Emerita of History at Fullerton College. Among her many publications are A Feminist Primer: Readings for Women’s Studies and Different Voices: Women in United States History.

Foreword

Cordelia Frances Biddle

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Editorial Apparatus

Introduction

Part 1: A Quaker Life

1. The Early Years, 1755–1778

2. A Season of Trials, 1778–1788

3. Faith in Action, 1788–1798

4. A Widow’s Ministry in the New Nation, 1798–1804

5. Serving the Church Militant, 1805–1816

Epilogue

Part 2: Writings and Testimonies

6. My Religious Progress

7. Radical Pacifism

8. Antislavery

9. Our Native Brethren

Part 3: Correspondence

10. Letters Among Friends, 1776–1799

11. Letters to Family and Friends, 1800–1813

Image Gallery

Appendix

Bibliography

Biographical Note: Gary B. Nash, 1933–2021

Cynthia Shelton

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

Biography & Memoir

History

           U.S.

Pennsylvania & the Mid-Atlantic

           History

Religious Studies & Religion