Buckingham Friends Meeting

Slavery was not always banned by the Society of Friends, but it was gradually banned by degrees. At first Quakers could not buy foreign slaves, then they could not trade and sell domestically. After 1776 slavery itself was banned. Consequently, Isaiah Quinby was disciplined for purchasing a slave in 1766, while members of the meeting that already owned slaves were not disciplined at that time. (Isaiah was the grandfather of John Blackfan, one of the Underground Railroad operators.)

Matthew Hughes, born in Buckingham in 1733, has the credit of being the first person to move a law in the assembly, while he was a member for this county, for the abolition of slavery in Pennsylvania. He died at nearly an hundred and was buried in the Buckingham Friends graveyard.

The Bucks Quarterly Meeting held meetings for blacks in the 1780s. Blacks apparently spoke at these meetings on occasion. The Committee on Free Negroes of Bucks Quarter reported in 1783 that a meeting “for the most part was a favored opportunity and that the blacks in the main had behaved in a becoming manner.”

In 1807 the graveyard committee of the meeting laid out a small portion of ground within the large grave yard to bury black people.

Buckingham Friends Meetinghouse

Buckingham Friends Meetinghouse

Buckingham Friends Meetinghouse

Buckingham Friends Meetinghouse

Buckingham Friends Meetinghouse

Buckingham Friends Meetinghouse

Buckingham Friends Meetinghouse

Buckingham Friends Meetinghouse

Buckingham Friends Cemetery from outside the wall.

Buckingham Friends Cemetery from outside the wall.