Quakers lived by uncompromising rules
Originally written by Peter Fay for the Jamestown Press June 11, 2026
The American Revolution profoundly disrupted the lives of Jamestown’s Quakers.
The social turmoil of the war, recorded in minutes of the meetings, reveals their internal struggles with their opposition to war, ostentation and slavery.
Demaris Fowler was a devout Quaker whose wealthy father was captain John Hull. Her siblings and her husband Gideon Fowler’s siblings married other Quakers, including Weedens, Underwoods and Carrs.
For decades, they worshiped at the Conanicut Friends Meetinghouse. When Gideon died unexpectedly before the war at 38, Demaris was forced to reassess her Quaker values.
Without a will, common law dictated one-third of her husband’s entire estate go to her. His inventory included unexpected extravagance: cravats, silver and gold buttons and rings, Holland shirts, and calico, velvet, broadcloth and gingham from India and London. The parlor contained mahogany tables, wine decanters and a looking glass.
Most Fowler men, often cordwainers and blacksmiths, owned no land. Gideon, however, was a sea captain with wealthy in-laws. He made two slaving voyages to Africa in his last few years. Demaris’ inheritance included not only ostentatious belongings, but two enslaved people: a boy, Ocra, worth 30 pounds, and Jane, worth 22 pounds and 10 shillings.
As a widow with three young sons, Demaris appealed to the Newport Quaker Meeting for support. They issued her a certificate so she could stay with her brother at a Quaker community in Pawling, N.Y. When she returned to Jamestown, she came under intense religious scrutiny in 1775.
Quaker discipline was uncompromising. Transgressions included marrying outside the society, giving birth “too soon” after marriage, gambling, drinking, taking oaths, military service, paying war taxes or, after the 1770s, having slaves.
Demaris sought to rejoin the Jamestown Quakers in 1775, but the Friends found she was “incumbered with a slave.” She said her children owned the slave but later admitted she owned one-third of 16-year-old Jane. Her children had inherited the other two-thirds of ownership.
The meeting welcomed Demaris when she finally manumitted her share. Others, such as Ann Bowers of Newport, refused to free their slaves, and the society disowned them.
Between 1775-84, Rhode Island Quakers disowned hundreds for various transgressions. Gen. Nathanael Greene and Jamestown’s Tiddeman Remington joined the war against “advise.” Susanna Dyer of Newport “married out of the society” and followed her husband in the U.S. Army, resulting in disownment.
Quakers unfailingly helped those in need. By April 1776, Quakers across the colonies, including Jamestown, had distributed 1,800 pounds to more than 5,000 desperate people in Boston. Refusing military oaths and war taxes also made them targets of Patriot forces.
In 1776, rebels enacted mandatory oaths, making Quakers unable to travel to meetings in Newport. British soldiers occupied the Jamestown meetinghouse, which “suffered considerably from them.”
Most Quakers left the island. A 1777 Rhode Island military census of all men found 31 had left the island, with only 24 remaining.
After the British withdrew to New York in 1779, Quakers slowly returned to Jamestown. The monthly meeting of women in Newport assisted the re-establishment of female Jamestown Quakers, revealing their foundational influence. Quakers did not disown Town Clerk Benjamin Underwood for raising money for the war, but he spent four years in debtors’ prison, and many Quakers “visited him in witness.”
As the war receded, the Friends complained of “difficulties and obstructions” attending meetings on Aquidneck, preferring to meet in Jamestown. They requested the transfer of their land to their trustees in January 1786. In July, they still were meeting in homes “under some disadvantage” and requested a new meetinghouse. A subscription paid for the construction of a modest 26-by-20-foot house, one story high, on the site of the old one. The community donated its labor.
After years of war, occupation, displacement and struggles over war and slavery, the Jamestown Quakers returned and rebuilt, though internal noncompliance continued.
Demaris fell ill and died in 1784, the year after the war ended. Her will included a remarkable provision. From her inventory of 195 pounds, she left a “reasonable sum of money” to recompense Ocra, “the negro I formerly owned,” for time served as a slave after age 21. This task was to be carried out by the executor of the will, her brother, Henry Fowler, who was also a slave-trading captain and had once suppressed an uprising aboard his ship, killing several captives.
She also gave him guardianship of her minor son, John. In 1790, captain Henry Fowler still had one unidentified slave in his home. It is unknown if it was Jane, who had been only one-third freed by Demaris.
