Early Years of The Religious Society of Friends

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Friends Friendship Meeting Religious Society of Friends Greensboro, North Carolina ________ The Early Years of The Religious Society of Friends George Fox
The Religious Society of Friends began as a religious movement during the Puritan Revolution in England (1652-1656). Outstanding among early leaders of the Society was George Fox (1624-1691), who was disillusioned by practices of professing Christians of his day. Fox eventually reached his own first-hand experience of Christ: And when all my hopes in them (preachers) and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, l heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition," and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. (Journal, 1647) In the early Friends meetings, small groups of people sat together in silence waiting upon the Lord, speaking only as divinely inspired to share a message. Sometimes the sense of spiritual power descending upon the group was so powerful that they trembled, whence the term "Quakers" by which members of the Society are still known. Quakerism crossed the Atlantic in early colonial days, with Friends settling in considerable numbers in Rhode Island, the New England islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, New Jersey, New York, and other eastern states. For years the colony of Pennsylvania, founded by the Quaker William Penn, was governed under Friends principles of human brotherhood. Friends in North Carolina In 1672, George Fox and William Edmundson traveled to America, and the two made their way to Carolina and visited Henry Phillips and his wife, the only known Quaker settlers at that time in North Carolina. As early as 1680, monthly meetings were established in the section of North Carolina around Albemarle Sound. The establishment of a yearly meeting in North Carolina dates from 1698, as shown by the following record: At a Quarterly Meeting held at the house of Henry White, Fourth Month 4th, 1698, it is unanimously agreed by Friends that the last Seventh-day of the Seventh Month, in every year, be the Yearly Meeting for this country, at the house of Francis Toms, and the Second day of the week following to be set apart for business.	Friends settlements were first made on the sounds and rivers near the coast, both in North and what is now South Carolina. A peak in the development of Quaker political leadership in this section was achieved in the appointment of John Archdale, convinced Friend, as Governor of the Carolinas in 1695-1696. During the period beginning with his governorship, a number of Friends were elected to the assembly; and Quakers were the dominant power in the Carolinas in the last decade of the century. With the turn of the century, English laws were enacted implanting the Church of England and making times difficult for dissenting groups. About the middle of the eighteenth century, as a result, a tide of migration set into the westward; and settlements of Friends grew up in Wayne, Randolph, and Guilford Counties, forming Contentnea, Western, and New Garden Quarterly Meetings of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting. In the year 1786, Western Quarterly Meeting requested "That the Yearly Meeting be held alternately in the East and in the West." After weighty consideration by the Yearly Meeting, the proposal was adopted, and the Yearly Meeting was held at Centre, Guilford County, in 1787. This alternate plan for location of Yearly Meeting continued until 1813. From 1813 to 1883, inclusive, with the exception of 1880 (when it was held at Friendsville, Tennessee), it was held at New Garden; and from 1883 to 1903, inclusive, at High Point. About this time, those members of the Yearly Meeting who felt that it was right for them to maintain the doctrines of the immediate and perceptible guidance of the Holy Spirit, of the headship of Christ over all things to His Church, and of the waiting worship and inspirational ministry which are, and must ever be, the outgrowth of these doctrines, believed it would be right for them to hold a separate Yearly Meeting. Accordingly they met in the capacity of North Carolina Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, at Cedar Grove, in the town of Woodland, Northampton County, North Carolina, in the year of 1904.
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