John Woolman Biography Quotes 18 Report mistakes

Early Life and Formation
John Woolman was born in 1720 in the countryside of West Jersey, near Rancocas in Burlington County. He grew up in a family of Friends (Quakers), the son of Samuel and Elizabeth Woolman, whose household taught him habits of plain living, inward reflection, and an early sensitivity to conscience. He received only modest formal schooling, but he read widely in the Bible and Quaker writings, and he learned practical trades while helping on the family farm. These formative years instilled the religious conviction that would guide his life: that there is a measure of divine light in all people, and that conduct must align with that truth.

Apprenticeship and First Moral Test
As a young man he trained as a clerk and later practiced as a tailor and small shopkeeper in and around Mount Holly, New Jersey. In this period he first confronted the moral crisis that defined his public witness. Asked to write a bill of sale for an enslaved person while working as a scribe, he complied, but the act weighed on him. He soon resolved not to draw up documents that treated human beings as property. This decision foreshadowed a lifelong labor against slavery, and it marked his emergence as a recognized minister among Friends, a role grounded not in formal clergy but in spiritual gifts affirmed by the Quaker community.

Marriage and Home Life
In 1749 he married Sarah Ellis, a fellow Friend of deep sympathy with his concerns. Their home in Mount Holly became a base for hospitality to travelers in the ministry and a place where John could simplify his business affairs to keep clear of practices that troubled his conscience. He limited commercial activity, adjusted prices to what he deemed just, and took pains to pay laborers promptly. The couple supported his frequent travels by acknowledging that spiritual obedience, not economic gain, should lead.

Travels and Ministry in the American Colonies
Woolman traveled repeatedly as a visiting minister through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. On one early southern journey his companion was his friend Isaac Andrews. They visited Quaker meetings, private homes, and plantations, speaking tenderly but directly about the moral wrong of holding people in bondage. He sought conversation, not confrontation, urging masters to manumit enslaved people and to reckon with the spiritual harm that slavery caused both to the oppressed and to those who profited from it. Witnessing the conditions of enslaved Africans deepened his resolve to separate himself from any gains, goods, or services tied to forced labor.

Writings and Public Influence
To carry his message beyond personal visits, Woolman wrote and circulated tracts, most notably Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (first published in the 1750s and expanded in the 1760s). Friends in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting helped print and distribute these essays widely among meetings. In this work he joined forces, formally and informally, with other Quaker reformers in Philadelphia, particularly Anthony Benezet, who assembled historical evidence against the slave trade and educated others about its cruelties. Woolman's words combined scriptural reflection, practical counsel, and a careful appeal to conscience, and they contributed to a growing unity among Friends that slaveholding could not be reconciled with their faith. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's strong actions against slaveholding in the late 1750s, and the firm discipline adopted in the 1770s, reflected a change for which his labors were a recognized part.

Testimonies of Simplicity and Economic Integrity
Woolman believed that the roots of oppression lay partly in habits of consumption. He therefore wore undyed clothing to avoid supporting dyes produced by coerced labor and refused refined sugar for similar reasons. He declined to write wills or bills of sale that treated people as chattel. He reduced his business and refused profitable but troubling opportunities, aiming to keep a clear mind for spiritual service. He wrote about just prices, fair wages, and the danger of wealth to compassion, and he counseled merchants and artisans to examine the chains of supply that tied their livelihood to injustice. His daily practice offered a lived argument: that personal choices could either reinforce or loosen the bonds of an unjust economy.

Concern for Native Peoples and the Poor
His travels also took him to frontier settlements and Indigenous communities in the interior of Pennsylvania. He reported on these visits with the same candor he brought to the subject of slavery, urging Friends and colonial officials to seek peace, honor treaties, and refrain from exploiting vulnerable neighbors. He was attentive to the poor in towns and countryside, visiting those in need and recording reflections on charity that pointed to structural causes as well as personal remedy. During times of war he refused to support measures that, in his view, fed violence, and he patiently explained his refusals to officers and tax collectors.

The Journal and Voice
Throughout his life he kept a journal that combined travel narrative with spiritual autobiography. Its plain style mirrors the humility he prized, and its honesty invites readers into the quiet process by which conviction takes hold. Friends arranged for the Journal to be published after his death. Over time it became one of the best-known spiritual narratives produced in colonial North America, valued both for its literary simplicity and for the way it joins inward piety to outward reform.

Fellow Friends and Networks of Care
Woolman's ministry unfolded within a web of relationships. Elders and committees of the Burlington and Philadelphia meetings oversaw his travels, offering counsel and letters of introduction. Companions such as Isaac Andrews shared the hardships of the road. In Philadelphia, Anthony Benezet provided learning, evidence, and moral support that complemented Woolman's pastoral approach. Across the Atlantic he met British Friends whose hospitality and discernment sustained him on wearying journeys. Even those who initially disagreed with him often granted his sincerity, and some later acknowledged that gentle visits and persistent correspondence changed their hearts.

Journey to Britain and Final Days
In 1772, feeling a religious call to visit Friends in Britain, he crossed the Atlantic. He attended sessions of the Yearly Meeting in London and then traveled north, visiting meetings in the English countryside. In York he was received into the home of Thomas and Sarah Priestman, Friends who nursed him when he fell ill with smallpox. He died there in 1772, far from his New Jersey home but surrounded by the fellowship of Friends who had come to know his spirit.

Legacy
John Woolman's legacy lies in the union of life and message. By joining argument to example, he helped turn Quaker opinion decisively against slaveholding and shaped a form of protest that linked personal discipline to social change. His writings, especially the Journal and his anti-slavery tracts, continued to circulate among Friends and beyond, guiding later generations who sought to align conscience, commerce, and compassion. Though not a clergyman in the formal sense, he was widely recognized as a minister among Friends, and his life remains a touchstone for those who believe that quiet integrity can move the public conscience.

Our collection contains 18 quotes who is written by John, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Justice - Parenting - Faith - Life.