A BIT OF HISTORY
©
SARAH BECKER
The Religious Society of Friends, also referred to as the Quaker Movement, was founded in England in the 17th century by George Fox.
S.P.I.C.E.S.
(No. Not the holiday kind ...) ‘Tis the holidays, a season many celebrate with tasty treats. Foods made with spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. For the Friends Meeting, followers of the Quaker faith—a Protestant faith— SPICES is an acronym for religious Testimonies. According to Swarthmore College, of Quaker origin, Quakers use the word testimony “to describe ‘a witness to the Living Truth Within the human heart’—as it is acted out in everyday life.” The six Quaker Testimonies are: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship of the Earth. Integrity, adherence to truth and an ethical code is a given. Peace Testimony: “The Peace testimony is based on the same understanding of the nature of God and of human beings,” Swarthmore said. “How can one kill another child of God, a potential channel of Truth, no matter how misguided he or she may seem at the moment?” The testimony has led many Friends to oppose war; to seek a reconciling force between peoples and nations in conflict. “Your principles & conduct are well known to me,” President and retired Revolutionary War General George Washington wrote the Society of Quakers in 1789, “and it is doing the People called Quakers no more than Justice to say, that [except their declining to share with others the burthren of the common defense] there is no Denomination among us who are more exemplary and useful Citizens.” Alexandria educator Benjamin Hallowell [17991877] “never doubted the correctness of the Quaker peace testimony.” He remained a pacifist during the War of 1812. An Alexandria exception: Disowned
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Joan Baez
Daniel Boone
8 December 2022
Quaker, Confederate army Major and inventor of the modern knuckle coupler Eli Hamilton Janney [1831-1912]. Two of America’s 46 Presidents were Quakers, Herbert Hoover [R-CA, 1929-1933] and Richard Nixon [R-CA, 1969-1974]. “The son of a Quaker blacksmith, Herbert Clark Hoover brought to the Presidency an unparalleled reputation for public service—as an engineer, administrator and humanitarian,” The White House wrote. “[O]nly through the guidance of Almighty Providence can I hope to discharge [government’s] ever-increasing burdens,” President Hoover said on March 4, 1929. Dangers included the failure of our system of criminal justice and the relation of government to business; education and public health, world peace and party responsibilities. “We are steadily building a new race—a new civilization great in its own attainments,” Hoover continued. “The most malign of all these dangers today is disregard and disobedience of law.” “We maintain party government not to promote intolerant partisanship, but…for accountability of government to the people,” Hoover concluded. “Some of President Richard Nixon’s most acclaimed achievements came in his quest for world stability,” The White House agreed. “For the first time, because the people of the world want peace, and the leaders of the world are afraid of war, the times are on the side of peace,” President Nixon said on January 20, 1969. “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker…This honor now beckons America.”
F A M O U S
David Byrne
Q U A K E R S
James Dean
Judi Dench
Y O U
Herbert Hoover
“During visits in 1972 to Beijing and Moscow, he reduced tensions with China and the U.S.S.R.,” The White House suggested. “Nixon’s summit meetings with Russian leader Leonid I. Brezhnev produced a treaty to limit strategic nuclear weapons. In January 1973, he announced an accord with North Viet Nam to end American involvement in Indochina.” U.S. Representative Nixon lived in Alexandria’s Park Fairfax from 1947 until 1951. Why, because in part Alexandria appreciates its understated Quaker heritage. Famous Quakers: like Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick [1762-1825] George Washington’s attending physician and founder of the Alexandria Masonic lodge to which Washington belonged; Alexandria apothecary, minister and manumitter Edward Stabler [1769-1831], and the Hallowell family. Benjamin Hallowell, originally from Pennsylvania came to Alexandria in 1824 to open a boarding school. The school was initially located on Oronoco Street, an “unhealthy edge of town.” “The subscribers intend opening in Alexandria, D.C. a BOARDING SCHOOL in which will be taught Spelling, Reading, Writing, Grammar; Geography with the use of the globes, Arithmetic, and the various branches of Mathematical Science, together with their application to the principles of Natural Philosophy,” Hallowell announced. By 1835 the relocated school “had students from fourteen different States and Territories; from South America, Cuba and England.” Admirers describe Hallowell as a schoolmaster,
M I G H T
Edward R. Murrow
A BIT OF HISTORY > PAGE 9
K N O W
Richard Nixon
Annie Oakley
Bonnie Raitt
Old Town Crier