Walk of witness: Jane Tod remembers John Woolman

‘250 years after his death his concerns continue to need our attention.’

It was a quiet, sunny autumn afternoon when Friends from York Area Meeting assembled at the old Quaker burial ground on 7 October. We were there to remember John Woolman, the US Quaker who died 250 years ago on that day. Many had gathered earlier at Almery Garth, which, in 1772, was the home of Thomas Priestman, where John Woolman died. We had walked across the River Ouse up to Bishophill.

It had rained earlier. Someone said ‘My husband offered me a lift but I refused and said that John Woolman would have walked despite the rain, and so would I.’ He was certainly a great walke – he walked from London to York as he knew the coach horses were mistreated.

Woolman left his home in New Jersey to tell English Quakers about the evil of slavery. He spoke to London Yearly Meeting and, after first not being welcome, the Epistle that year referred to the practice of holding people in ‘oppressive and unnatural Bondage’ and that ‘a Traffic so unmerciful and unjust in its Nature… be utterly abolished.’ Woolman’s ministry had obviously had a great effect. He went on to Banbury, Birmingham and Nottingham and ‘engaged in public and private speaking on his theme of the great human brotherhood and each one’s responsibility for the distress of others.’

He noted the effects of the Enclosures, the dangers of greed, and trade involving slave-produced goods like sugar. Walking onwards to Westmoreland and Thirsk encountering Friends and relatives, he came to York where he succumbed to smallpox and died.

Bishopshill Burial Ground is a peaceful tree-lined green space; the gravestones have been moved to the walls. Early Quakers did not erect headstones but one was later made for John Woolman and has the words ‘Near this stone rest the remains of John Woolman of Mount Holly, New Jersey, North America who died at York.’

Lynda Williams of New Earswick Meeting spoke about Woolman’s life, his concerns about slavery and indigenous peoples, his environmental awareness and how 250 years after his death all these continue to need our attention. We felt a strong sense of gratitude for the grace of God as shown to us in his life.

At the burial ground in New Jersey where John’s wife Sarah is buried, Friends met two days later, on the day of his burial. Friends in London and Bristol were also gathering to remember him. Friends in York sent an Epistle to Mount Holly, which concluded ‘It is a joy to connect with you all in that pure principle across the seas, across the centuries, and specifically from the place of John Woolman’s death to the place of his birth’.

A final quotation from Woolman himself: ‘There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath different names; it is, however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation soever, they become brethren.’

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