Today, there are an estimated 80,000 Friends in North America, with most being in the United States.
In 1656 the number of U.S. Friends was zero.
But in Seventh Month of that year, on the 11th to be precise, the Friends population rose to two as Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, two English Quakers, sailed from Barbados and landed in Boston, Massachusetts to become the first Friends in the British North American colonies.
Boston was a very Puritan city at that time, and Austin and Fisher’s arrival was met harshly.
Quakers in the 1600s were against church authority. They fought for equality between men and women and against slavery. These ideas were very radical for the time and did not go over well with the Puritan leaders.
The two Friends were arrested immediately after arriving in Boston.
Their prison cell was boarded up to isolate them, and possibly to try to starve them to death. A Boston innkeeper, Nicholas Upsall, was able to bribe the prison warden with five shillings a week so that he could deliver food to Austin and Fisher.
They ended up spending five weeks in jail. During this time, the women were able to share their new Quaker faith with Upsall and he became a Friend, becoming the first North American Puritan convert to Quakerism.
Austin and Fisher were deported back to Barbados and they returned to England in 1657.
Ann Austin continued her ministry until her death in 1665. Mary Fisher also continued to spread the word, and is one of the Valiant Sixty (a group of early Quaker activists and preachers). The accounts of her mission trip to the Ottoman Empire are truly remarkable, and will make a great subject for a future Reflections post.
Peachtree Friends Meeting 