Reasons Why Quakers Might Be Disowned or “Dealt With”

Isaac Sharpless, in his A History of Quaker Government in Pennsylvania () gives a sample list of some of the reasons individual Quakers were disowned or “dealt with” by their monthly meetings in Philadelphia in the years around the American Revolution. Here are some of them:

  • Taking money for warlike services of slaves
  • Paying fines in lieu of personal military service
  • Purposely placing money before a person who was about seizing his effects to satisfy a fine imposed on him in lieu of military service
  • Dealing in prize goods
  • Holding a commission for furnishing supplies to one of the parties engaged in strife and war
  • Purchasing a horse that was taken as a prize
  • Assisting in laying a tax for military purposes
  • Countenancing the fine gatherers by taking some receipts which had been given for forage taken by the army in lieu of personal military service
  • Offering duplicates in order for the collection of taxes, part of which is a fine for not taking the test (so-called)
  • Countenancing the payment of a demand for the releasing of his cow that was seized for a substitute fine
  • Selling prize rum which his son got by privateering
  • Paying a fine for refusing to collect taxes for military purposes
  • Paying taxes for hiring men to go to war