Reconsidering Simplicity, Equality, Peace, and the End of the Meeting

Divisions within the Tortola meeting are brought to a head in this concluding chapter. In effect, two differing ideas of the Quaker community grew over the course of the meeting. Some considered it as one of mutual support which complemented connections to non-Quaker neighbors, while others emphasized the separateness of Quakers: a chosen few among the sinful majority of “world’s people.” There were also economic and social elements to this division. This closing chapter thus attempts to address one of the central issues remaining about the meeting: its end. Although previous writers have assumed that a simple incompatibility between Quakerism and slavery led to the end of the meeting, this chapter counters this suggestion and makes a new argument. Lastly, this chapter will reflect on the nature of religious communities as revealed by moving back and forth between archaeology and written documents. Religious ideals are performed and created in daily practice in particular local contexts, creating variation and creativity, as shown for the Tortola Quaker community. These differences, this chapter suggests, are a fundamental part of the religion rather than footnotes or hypocrisy, and archaeology is key to understanding them, focused as it is on mundane practice.

Discipline, Community, and Conformity

Every group has standards of action which are enforced through various social mechanisms. Quakerism’s greatest punishment was “disownment” or the expelling of a member from the group, but this was the result of a sometimes long process of “treating” with errant members. While this structure was common, the particular crimes which occasioned such procedures and the way they were prosecuted were very much local. Alcohol and tobacco are frequently understood as “sinful” in historical archaeological works but chapter 6 complicates this picture, exploring the roles of these substances in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). The chapter also considers the way the “discipline” was and was not applied in the BVI, and continues to trace a series of fault lines within the BVI Quaker community arising from disagreements over priorities and perspectives. The written record is evaluated here, and it is argued that it must be seen as the product of only part of this community which is, in part, countered by archaeological evidence.

“Two Plantations” on the Plantation

Chapter 3 examines the issue of “simplicity,” how Quakerism everywhere involved a concern for economic well-being, and how the Lettsoms in particular may have benefited from their involvement with the Tortola meeting. Although one cannot suppose insincerity in the conversion of British Virgin Islands (BVI) Quakers, it is also true that economics and religion were intimately tied together, particularly for those in this rural, marginal part of the colonial world. This chapter discusses the economics of small-island plantations, and recounts archaeological and historical evidence of economic improvement on Little Jost van Dyke and for the Lettsoms.

Introduction

This introductory chapter sketches the questions and goals of the overall project and the needed background information about Quakerism. It introduces the Tortola Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (“Quakers”) which formed in the British Virgin Islands about 1740 and addresses how archaeology can approach the study of religion and religious communities. This chapter also serves as an introduction to Quakerism itself, including its ideology based on individual, un-mediated communion with God, and a brief history of the group from its foundation in the political and economic turmoil of mid-seventeenth-century England, to the “Quietism” of wealthy “Quaker Grandees” in Philadelphia, to a nineteenth and twentieth century history of schism and reunion around pacifism. The Quaker structure of Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly meetings is introduced, and connected to both community oversight and support structures. Finally, this chapter introduces three main Quaker ideals—simplicity, equality, and peace—which will be interrogated throughout the work as they change in their interactions with Caribbean slavery and geography.

Equality, Race, and Slavery in BVI Communities

Chapter 7 examines the question of equality in British Virgin Islands (BVI) Quakerism in two distinct but intertwined ways. The fact that members of the Tortola meeting held Africans enslaved is a defining feature of this community and has attracted much modern attention. Although discordant to modern readers, Chapter Seven traces the complex and equivocal history of slavery and Quakerism. To explore how these complexities manifested in the BVI, it examines what can be said about the relationship between the Lettsoms of Little Jost van Dyke and the enslaved Africans they held there. Instead of the usual emphasis on oversight and control, the layout of the complex made for a distinction of free and enslaved at the expense of direct oversight. Chapter 7 also examines the relations and concern for connections with non-Quaker planters. In particular, it suggests that some of the markers which performed and created Quakerism had to be moderated so as not to threaten ties beyond the group. Performances of Quakerism were more private, whereas the most public statements of the Lettsoms would have been compatible with the planter community at large. Quakerism was mapped onto existing racial and legal distinctions between white and black, free and enslaved.

Peace and Weaponry on BVI Quaker Sites

Pacifism is a defining feature of Quakerism which has led the group into recognition by—and conflict with—society at large. However, it takes on a very different cast when pacifism is understood by people who hold others enslaved under the constant threat of violence and in turn spend their days threatened by foreign invasion. Archaeological markers of weaponry and documentary accounts of persecution over refusal to support the military are the subject of Chapter Five, which details how Quaker pacifism was understood by BVI contemporaries and altered even further from modern conceptions by British Virgin Islanders. The record suggests a conflicted understanding of this ideal in the BVI, in which some members emphasized their persecution over this idea far beyond any real threat as a way of connecting themselves to the broader Atlantic community of Quakerism and it’s “ancient martyrs.”

“Furnished with Convenience for a Meeting House”

Members of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) Quaker community also seem to have been particularly concerned with physical markers of their group on the landscape: meetinghouses. One expression of the idea of simplicity among Quakers elsewhere was the fact that the Quaker form of worship takes place without formal programs, hymns, or lectures, and can be conducted anywhere, even outside; yet BVI Quakers placed special emphasis on the building of meetinghouses. At least two and possibly more were built during the meeting’s twenty-year history, including at Fat Hog’s Bay, Tortola, and these structures were unique as civic buildings in the BVI at the time. The buildings also took on different meanings to different members and this discussion begins to uncover conflict among the Tortola Meeting members over how Quaker ideals are best understood and how they change to suit the Caribbean context of the group.

Contexts

Chapter 2 provides a history of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) themselves and how their unusual place in the colonial process produced a more isolated, poorer set of white colonists than many other Caribbean islands. The marginal agricultural potential of the BVI left them uncolonized longer than most islands and European settlement began there in a haphazard way, with no formal government, church, or other institutions. This left the settlers free to experiment with new social forms, such as Quakerism, the arrival of which is also recounted here. But this isolation also posed challenges and left them in precarious positions. This chapter also introduces the Lettsom family who will be the focus for the study along with their island of Little Jost van Dyke, before describing the archaeological work undertaken to address the project’s questions. The remainder of the volume takes up the themes of simplicity, equality, and peace, shifting between written and archaeological evidence to understand how BVI Quakers understood and enacted these ideas differently than Quakers elsewhere.