#12 - Phebe Willets Frees Her Slave before Rev War: Westbury, NY & Gets Other Quakers to Free Theirs!

My mother (the descendant this Phebe Willets) made it clear to us all from our youngest days that all people are of equal value. I did not know that there was a racism problem in this country until I heard about it on radio.  Both my parents set a good example for us and their children imitate what their parents embrace (and, by extension, the culture will be affected).

These ancestors had embraced ideas regarding people’s equality first on religious grounds, and some of them paid heavily for it. 

In this ancestral line some fought the Civil War for the Union, others were engaged in helping escaped slaves make it to safely to the North, and others spearheaded the first manumissions in New York.

Phebe Willets, my 7th great grandmother, was born in 1699 a Quaker home. Phebe became Quaker preacher and traveled and preached. She is the subject of Post #22 on this blog (with regard to her preaching).
Eventually, she married first at 32, a much older man, Adam Mott. They had three children, including my 6th great grandmother Elizabeth Mott. After Adam died, she married widower Tristam Dodge (she was in her 40s). She died in her 83rd year.
I find scattered references to Phebe Willets Dodge (or Phebe Willets Mott Dodge) in history books now and then. They usually say something like this:
 

However, what this doesn’t reveal is that she actually began the ball rolling at Old Westbury Meeting: beginning with her, the Friends at Meeting eventually manumitted all their slaves. This wasn't as light a matter as it sounds: people often found they had serious financial loss when they manumitted a slave. Long Islanders needed manpower to get jobs done: if you pay someone it makes a dent in your pocketbook. 

In 1939, Marietta Hicks (the niece of my great-great-great grandmother Marianna Hicks) turned over the original manumission papers which were witnessed (or "affirmed") at Old Westbury Meeting to {name?} someone for safekeeping.
 
The papers were transcribed, and someone eventually copied them, and we now have digital versions of these papers. (Though only some of the originals are available).
 
The typical wording of the manumission paper was similar to Elias Hicks’ and it went this way:
 

However, Phebe Willets (Dodge) was the first person in Old Westbury to manumit her slave. 

In contrast to the others, Phebe’s commitment to her faith rings out in her manumission paper: it was a cause based in her faith, not a statement for the Meeting.  Her conscience provoked her sense of obligation, and her ethics derived from that, not the other way around.  By this time, she was elderly,  she had nothing to gain, yet she felt it unChristian to keep another person as a slave.

Her manumission has a distinctly different tone to it (as its transcription shows). 
Phebe had been considering this issue for "some years" and it was a concern. It was her "duty as a ..Christian act to set her at Liberty." ["her" is Rachel, a slave her 2nd husband had left her when he died]

I would guess since she had been a Quaker preacher of some notoriety, she probably also urged others passionately (along with several other Friends who felt similarly, such as Elias Hicks) to do the same, and to stimulate the Friends in Meeting on this.  
Indeed, by the end of the Revolutionary War Old Westbury Meeting had manumitted all their slaves.
But what is striking to me--having lived in other cultures--is that the faith was proactive in its goodness.
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Below find the transcribed manumissions--there might be an ancestor of interest in here:

 

Richard Willits manumits Jean, affirmed by Elias Hicks and William Valentine, of one several originals left.

#11 - Phebe Willets (Mott) (Dodge)- Female Preacher when before Women were Equal - part 1 of 2

Phebe Willets, Female  Preacher Before Women were Equal (part 1/2)

I almost missed this ancestor because I made the mistake of focusing on the male names.
Beginning with my mother's side, the first names go backwards like this: Elizabeth (my grandmother)-Bertha-Marianna-Mary-John-Samuel-Elizabeth-Phebe Willets (Mott) (Dodge). Or, the visual:
  
Phebe Willets was born in 1699, and died in 1782 in her 83rd year, having lived through the transition from Dutch to English control of New York, the French & Indian War, and dying right before the end of the Revolutionary  War.

She married "late" (in her 30s) Adam Mott (who was much older) and they had 3 children [including my ancestor Elizabeth Mott]. Adam died when her youngest was a toddler. Phebe remarried (Tristam Dodge), he also predeceased her.
Long Island Quakers began meeting before Penn's: about 25 years before William Penn's settlement in Pennsylvania & about 20 years before Burlington, New Jersey in 1657.

By the late 1600s, when Phebe Willets was born, there were more Friends Meetings (Quaker equivalent of churches) in Queens County-which then included some towns also in what is now Nassau County-than Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed or Anglican churches. 

Not only that, but the Quakers exerted influence that was disproportionate to their numbers, and their influence lasted into the early 1800s. 

Quakers were especially noted for recognizing women as equal and valued members. They spearheaded much of what we call Gender Equality. 

From what I have read, the Quaker values, heritage and ways of thinking and behavior, helped give women the strength to organize for female suffrage.   Did you know that at the First Woman's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848, the main organizers were Quakers or former Quaker--except one (Elizabeth Cady Stanton)? [They were: Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann M'Clintock, Jane Hunt=Quakers; Martha Coffin Wright=Quaker,but disowned for marrying out of unity; and the non-Quaker=Elizabeth Cady Stanton].

Women & Preaching
Even today, the recognizable names of ministers and preachers are usually males.  Most denominations don’t recognize women as leaders in the church (called ordination). 

The Society of Friends began differently. Since the beginning of Quakerism in the 1600s, starting with Margaret (Askew) Fell of England  (who wrote the book,“Women’s Speaking Justified: a Scripture-Based Argument for Women’s Ministry”) women in Quakerism were preachers. I guess that set the pace.
"They practiced greater equality for women centuries before most other religious groups--women Quaker ministers and missionaries came to Long Island, and women ministers from Long Island traveled to preach and exhort."(Women in Long Island's Past: A History of Eminent Ladies and Everyday Lives, by Natalie A Naylor).

This, at a time when women didn't vote or even speak in public meetings. And they DID NOT PREACH.
Quakers in the American colonies recognized many “official preachers” (for more, see Daughters of Light by Rebecca Larson, and Strangers & Pilgrims-Female Preaching in America by Catherine A Brekus).
A preacher was distinct from being moved to speak in a typical Quaker meeting where either sex may speak--preachers were specially recognized:

Explanation from Carol Faulkner

Phebe Willets stood out to me because she was recognized by her Long Island Meeting as a preacher. Phebe not only preached, but she traveled and preached. That suggests she was in some kind of demand by other meetings.

Before you think Phebe was speaking about gender equality, think again. All preachers were recognized as having a special gift which was rooted in faith, not in the outcomes of the faith. Gender equality was an outcome of their faith.

"their vindication of women’s right to preach was always secondary to their faith in biblical revelation. 
They were biblical rather than secular feminists and based their claims of female equality on the grounds of scriptural revelation. 
Female preachers were too conservative in their theology for women’s rights activists but too radical to be remembered by evangelicals.”  (Strangers and Pilgrims - Female Preachers in America by Catherine A Brekus)

Phebe Willets, it seems, was one of those women ministers. She expanded her field when she traveled as companion minister with Susanna Morris and Mary Weston in 1752 -1753 to meetings in England.

Knowing Quakerism & a bit of Quaker history, I agree with Larson when she asserts that female freedoms helped to bolster the hand of women involved in the nascent women's rights movements:

From "Daughters of Light" by Rebecca Larson

This post is Part 1 of 2 about her because Phebe will appear in the follwing post for (once again) setting the pace for her fellow Quakers--and they set pace for New York at the time. 

Phebe Willets Mott or Phebe Willets Dodge appears over and over histories of the 1700s, I am so glad I followed this line. I'll have to continue to keep an eye on other my female lines now and then!

from appendix of female preachers "Daughters of Light" by Larson