Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Women Friends

Metadata

Title

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Women Friends

Digital Identifier

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Women Friends

Description

A minute establishing a Women's Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia is dated 1681; the first recorded minutes begin in 1691. Quaker men and women worshiped together and women appeared in ministry equal with their male counterparts, but business was generally conducted separately at all levels of Friends’ organization until the 19th century. In general, the business of a women’s yearly meeting was to care for the poor, to see to the education of children, and to communicate with other women’s meetings on matters of concern.

Selected Items from the Collection

Yearly Meetings are large autonomous bodies of Quakers, meeting for several days once annually to conduct business, formulate the discipline, receive reports and concerns from its constituent meetings, review the state of the Society, and communicate…
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