Primary Source Analysis: Quaker Philanthropy and Indigenous People in the Maritimes
- Colby Gaudet
- Dec 7, 2025
- 12 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
My interest in the history of religion often gravitates to the topic of Christianity and Indigenous people. I’m particularly compelled to study the ways that Christian groups interacted with Indigenous people in the contexts of colonialism. My PhD studies focused on Roman Catholicism in the Maritimes and/or Mi’kma’ki. My personal position (of Acadian settler ancestry), having grown up in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, precipitated my interest in such subjects. It’s well documented that Catholic priests began missionizing the Mi’kmaq in the early seventeenth century with the founding of Port-Royal, the colonial capital of Acadia. Of the Christian Churches, it was the Catholics that most deeply (and with the greatest enduring impacts) affected Mi’kmaw culture. Missionaries of other denominations, such as the Anglicans, Methodists, and Baptists, later tried to launch missions to the Mi’kmaq, but failed. They failed because the Catholic religious hierarchy had already entrenched itself in paternalistic, colonial relationships with the Mi’kmaq. Much of the pre-Confederation archival material about benevolent activity toward Indigenous people in the Maritimes was composed by (or in dialogue between) Catholic priests and Protestant administrators or civil servants. There were certainly plenty of Protestant benefactors who requested, collected, and distributed relief goods of their own initiative, but they did so (by and large) in typical philanthropic indifference, without attempting to convert Mi'kmaw recipients.
What struck me about this document,[1] is that it reflects the perspective of none of the above-listed religious groups. When I saw this item in the Mi'kmaq and Government Relations papers at the Nova Scotia Archives, I was immediately interested in the fact that it’s a Quaker document – a letter from one Quaker (or Friend) to another. In April 1801, Samuel Moore of Wilmot Township in the Annapolis Valley wrote to Lawrence Hartshorne, a Quaker merchant, philanthropist, and Indian Affairs commissioner in Halifax. In the letter, Moore expressed concern for an impoverished Mi’kmaw family who had been lodging near him and to whom Moore had been providing some aid. Moore asked Hartshorne for material assistance.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Wilmot 4mo 27 1801
Respected Friend
I have Understood there is Some provision by Government For the Support of the Indiens and I did not know who had the Manigment of it therefor I make free to Desire thee to make the Necessary Inquiery of those who has the Manigment; ther was Several families Camp’t Near me this winter and some of them seam’d to be willing to work if they Could Get Imploy therefore I employed one man who had a helpless mother to maintain. I sot [tot?] him to [illegible] […]oping Down and by a misfortune in the fall of a tree he broke his Ledg [leg] viz 23 of Last month & I Got It set and have took the Necessary Care of him Every Since & at this time can begin to beare his weight and Step a Little but provible [probably] will be some time before he will be able to Do any work he and his helpless mother has Scarcely anything to Cover their Nakedness therefor If there is any provision for Indiens I Do not think there Is any more Deedy [needy] or Deserving as he seems willing to work for the support of him Self and Mother; they have been a heavy Taxe on me this winter.
From thy Friend
Samuel Moore
Larence Hartshorn
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From this letter, we can learn some things directly about Quaker networks in Nova Scotia. And, by thinking contextually, we can learn about Samuel Moore’s concern for Indigenous welfare and how this concern reflects what historians know about philanthropy and settler colonialism. The letter also permits us to place Moore, Hartshorne, and the Mi’kmaw man and his mother, amid a world of Quaker philanthropy in the early modern North Atlantic.[2]
Quakers (known as the Society of Friends) were never numerous in the Maritimes, and this accounts for the reason they have received little historical examination.[3] The 1827 census of Nova Scotia enumerated only twenty Quakers. Half of those resided in the township of Barrington, Shelburne County, and six resided in Annapolis County, with four of those living in the township of Wilmot.[4] It’s likely that, by 1827, the number of Quakers in Nova Scotia was significantly reduced from their number at the time of the Planter and Loyalist migrations. In the Quaker community of Upper Canada, Robynne Rogers Healey has observed that “second generation” Quakers (those born after the migrations from Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania) began integrating into mainstream Protestant society. Healey notes that controversies over orthodoxy within Quakerism led many young Quakers to go among the Methodists rather than engage in the ideological battles of their elders.[5] While the Maritime Quaker community was smaller than the Yonge Street Meeting studied by Healey, it likely underwent similar dynamics of social integration as the second generation of Quakers came of age by the 1820s.[6] Nevertheless, the 1827 census shows that what Quakers remained in Nova Scotia were still concentrated in the townships where their elders had settled several decades earlier. One of the Quakers enumerated in Wilmot was named Edward Moore, a possible descendant or relation of Samuel.
Born in Woodbridge, New Jersey, Samuel Moore (1742–1822) was a Loyalist who, as a Quaker and pacifist, proclaimed political neutrality during the American Revolutionary War. Moore refused to take up arms against the Patriots, yet he later reported being arrested several times by the Patriots for refusing to join them.[7] He eventually migrated to Halifax and acquired land in Wilmot. During the War of 1812 Moore left Nova Scotia and relocated his family to Upper Canada. As Moore’s life attests, Quaker settlements in the Maritimes were unstable. The Maritime Quaker communities, especially their largest settlement at Pennfield, New Brunswick, garnered the concern of the New York and Philadelphia Yearly Meetings that sent material aid to the fledgling settlement.[8] In Nova Scotia, there was a significant Quaker community for a time in Dartmouth – the result of the immigration of a group of Quaker whalers from Nantucket.[9]
The Loyalist Quakers endured in identifiable communities for several decades. In 1801, Joseph Hoag (1762–1846), a Quaker missionary from Vermont toured the Maritimes to minister to the small and dispersed numbers of his fellow Friends. In his journal, Hoag mentioned Samuel Moore, denoting Moore’s centrality to Nova Scotia’s Quaker networks. “We took the stage [from Dartmouth] and in three days crossed the country over to the bay side and came to Samuel Moore’s at whose house Friends meeting was held on first day once in two weeks. … The 10th and first of the week we had a large favored meeting at Samuel Moore’s.” As a preacher, Hoag emphasized the personal, heart-centered nature of Quaker theology and commented on the felt sentiments of his meetings. “The minds of the people were broken into tenderness, several of them to shedding of tears plentifully.” He observed that many people in the region, long removed from the pastoral care available in urban locales, were indifferent to religious concerns. “In the afternoon we had a meeting on the [North] Mountain among a poor people that were glad of the opportunity and much tendered under the testimony I had to bear among them, yet there did not appear to be much religious concern with any of them.”[10] Hoag’s journal also contains some insight on Indigenous interactions with Quaker religiosity. When he visited the Quaker establishment called the Pennfield Settlement near Beaver Harbour in New Brunswick, Hoag wrote: “We then went back in the country to a new settlement and had a large favored meeting in a barn. A tribe of Indians came to it an sit very sober. After meeting they were asked how they liked what was said. One of them answered putting his hand on his breast, ‘I could not understand every word but I felt him here. I believe he is a very good man.’”[11] While we can’t know if Moore tried to proselytize the Mi’kmaw man in his charge, Hoag’s words suggest at least some Wolastoqiyik, Peskotomuhkati, and Mi’kmaq were exposed to (and perhaps interested in) the Quaker message spread by such itinerants. The friendly, 'heart-felt' nature of Quaker practice – rhetorically signified in Hoag's account by the Indigenous man placing a hand on his breast – was perhaps the source of a personal bond of concern and care also experienced between Moore and the Mi'kmaw man and his mother.
While there is little other evidence from the hand of Samuel Moore, historians do have plenty of archival material to analyze regarding Lawrence Hartshorne (1755–1822), to whom Moore addressed his letter. From a leading Quaker family in the Sandy Hook area of New Jersey, Hartshorne came to Nova Scotia during the American Revolution. He was a Loyalist and was part of the evacuation of New York City in 1783. He settled in Halifax, later in Dartmouth. Hartshorne first entered public affairs in 1791 when he became an agent of the Sierra Leone Company to assist John Clarkson while the latter was organizing the Black Loyalist migration from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone.[12] Hartshorne helped Clarkson assemble the provisions and resources necessary for lodging the future Sierra Leone settlers in Halifax during the weeks before the company’s departure in January 1792. Clarkson was a known abolitionist, brother to Thomas Clarkson, the renowned proponent of British abolitionism who was later instrumental in bringing about the 1807 Slave Trade Act that ended the transatlantic slave trade in the British Empire. While the Clarkson brothers were not Quakers (they were associated with the evangelical-minded ‘Clapham Sect’ of the Church of England), John Clarkson and Hartshorne shared a common abolitionist sentiment that was harnessed in the final months of 1791 to execute the ‘back to Africa’ exodus.[13]
Hartshorne’s interest in Clarkson’s project is not surprising. Eighteenth-century Quakerism had a strong abolitionist vein. The central Quaker theology – that every person contained the Inner Light of divinity – had leveling social and political effects, meaning (among other things) that many Quakers supported anti-slavery causes.[14] According to historian David Sutherland, Hartshorne’s work in Halifax “appears to have been motivated by a Quaker-inspired concern for blacks and by a belief that their advancement could best be achieved with a return to Africa.” Clarkson departed with the Nova Scotian settlers (as they became known in Sierra Leone), and Hartshorne returned to his affairs in Halifax. He had a favourable relationship with Lieutenant Governor Wentworth and the advantage of being appointed to many city committees. He was elected to the House of Assembly in 1793. Along the way, Hartshorne had also become a hardware merchant, in partnership with Thomas Boggs, a Loyalist also from New Jersey. In 1793, Wentworth appointed Hartshorne and Boggs as “provisioning agents” for Nova Scotia’s Indigenous population. By this time, Hartshorne “had become a member of the inner circle of the [Haligonian] oligarchy.” The Quaker entrepreneur also operated a gristmill with Jonathan Tremain on the Dartmouth side of Halifax Harbour, “long ranked as the largest manufactory in Nova Scotia.”[15] After the death of his first wife, Elizabeth Ustick, Hartshorne married Tremain’s daughter, Abigail, in 1802.
The accounts of Hartshorne and Boggs with Indian Affairs show that they supplied material goods to Mi’kmaq as state-issued relief. Between 1801 and 1808 the men provided from their warehouse items such as powder, shot, guns, hats, occasionally agricultural supplies such as hoes and axes. From his mill with Tremain, Hartshorne also supplied corn meal to Indigenous people.[16] Considering Hartshorne’s authority over Indian Affairs and his Quaker identity, it is no wonder Samuel Moore wrote to him. While Moore didn’t discuss points of Quaker belief in his letter, his description of his actions is in keeping with Quaker attitudes of benevolence to Indigenous people in eighteenth-century North America. Moore said that several Mi’kmaw families were camped near him during the winter and that one man in particular showed himself to be industrious with an interest in working. Moore offered the man employment so he might take care of his ailing mother. The unidentified Mi’kmaw man broke his leg while working, and Moore accommodated the man while he convalesced. Moore was especially concerned to obtain charitable donations of clothing for these impoverished people. We don't know if Hartshorne (a fellow Friend) replied to Moore's letter, or supplied materials in response to this specific request, but Hartshorne's ongoing supply of such relief via the "Indian Committee" would suggest he did.
Lastly, this letter tells us about the conditions of Indigenous dispossession and the colonial pauperization of the Mi’kmaq.[17] Moore was part of the massive settler influx into Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia in the late eighteenth century. The Wilmot Township, and the Annapolis Valley overall, was settled by many Anglo-Protestants from New England who came to Nova Scotia as Planters in the 1760s and, later, as Loyalists in 1783. These settlers were joined in the Maritimes by immigrants from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. To this mix was added Acadians and Black Loyalists taking up lands in this region. The Mi’kmaq were being forced off their traditional hunting and fishing territories, and were increasingly hemmed in by colonial settlements. Moore’s letter informs us that several Mi’kmaw families sought refuge in his vicinity as resources were being depleted. The son, with his work ethic, and his “helpless” mother elicited a particular pathos from Moore who saw their neediness. He felt this rendered them “deserving” subjects of state aid that, in this case, was also a kind of Quaker philanthropy. Moore turned to Hartshorne, having heard that he or someone he knew was responsible for the provincial “management” of Indian Affairs. While the letter is an appeal for benevolence standard of its time, it’s also a uniquely Quaker appeal, Friend to Friend, in the name of the dignity of all people, especially those subjected to unjust misfortune and dispossession. By invoking the logics of civilization and improvement, the letter also situates Moore and Hartshorne amid the many and diverse Christian attempts to 'do good' that were also actions imbricated in the processes of settler colonization.[18] The spirit of philanthropy may have partially motivated Quakers like Moore to offer material relief to those in need, but Hartshorne was also an entrepreneur profitably driven by such economic exchanges.
[1] Samuel Moore to Lawrence Hartshorne, 27 April 1801, Nova Scotia Archives (NSA), RG-1, v. 430, no. 69. On colonial benevolence in early North America, see Laura Stevens, The Poor Indians: British Missionaries, Native Americans, and Colonial Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). On the Maritimes in particular, see Judith Fingard, “The New England Company and the New Brunswick Indians, 1786–1826: A Comment on the Colonial Perversion of British Benevolence,” Acadiensis 1, no. 2 (Spring 1972): 29–42.
[2] Robynne Rogers Healey, ed., Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690–1830 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021), especially, Geoffrey Plank, “Quakers, Indigenous Americans, and the Landscape of Peace,” 179–199; Sarah Crabtree, Holy Nation: The Transatlantic Quaker Ministry in an Age of Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2015).
[3] The few studies include: Allen Robertson, "To Declare and Affirm: Quaker Contributions to Planter Nova Scotia," in Making Adjustments: Change and Continuity in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800, ed. Margaret Conrad (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1991), 129–139; and Arthur Mekeel, “The Quaker-Loyalist Migration to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in 1783,” Bulletin of Friends’ Historical Association, v. 32, no. 2 (1943): 65–75. In his history of Queens County, James More noted that Quakers (alongside Congregationalists and Presbyterians) were among the first New England settlers of the Barrington and Yarmouth townships in 1760, see More, The History of Queens County, N.S. (Halifax: Nova Scotia Printing Co., 1873), 22.
[4] A Statistical Return of the Province of Nova Scotia, 1827, NSA, RG-1, vols. 446 and 447.
[5] Robynne Rogers Healey, From Quaker to Upper Canadian: Faith and Community among Yonge Street Friends, 1801–1850 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 133–149.
[6] Robertson suggests this in "To Declare and Affirm," 139.
[7] Theodore Holmes, Loyalists to Canada: The 1783 Settlement of Quakers and Others at Passamaquoddy (Camden, ME: Picton Press, 1992), 90–2.
[8] Mekeel, “Quaker-Loyalist Migration,” 69–71; “The Pennfield Records,” Collections of the New Brunswick Historical Society no. 4 (1899): 73–80.
[9] During the 1790s, reports of the Dartmouth Yearly Meetings were sent to the Nantucket elders, see Minutes of the Nova Scotia Meetings of the Society of Friends, 1786–1798, NSA, microfilm 11,323.
[10] “The Journal of Joseph Hoag – A Quaker in Atlantic Canada, 1801–1802,” Canadian Quaker History Newsletter, no. 39 (supplement, July 1986): 10.
[11] “Journal of Joseph Hoag,” 2
[12] Charles Bruce Ferguson, ed., Clarkson’s Mission to America, 1791–1792 (Halifax: Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1971).
[13] Seynabou Thiam-Pereira, Les Loyalistes noirs et la guerre d'Indépendance des États-Unis: Étude comparée d’une communauté réfugiée au Canada, 1775–1815 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2025), 301–333.
[14] Crabtree, Holy Nation, 133–164; Katharine Gerbner, “‘We are against the traffik of men-body’: The Germantown Quaker Protest of 1688 and the Origins of American Abolitionism,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 74, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 149–172. The Quakers started early benevolent societies in cities like Philadelphia. Such Quaker societies aimed to aid "suffering Fellow Creatures .... without distinction of Nation or Colour." See Robert Gross, "Giving in America: From Charity to Philanthropy," in Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History, eds. Lawrence Friedman and Mark McGarvie (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 41
[15] D.A. Sutherland, “Hartshorne, Lawrence,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography online, v. 6: https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/hartshorne_lawrence_6E.html. Over two decades after the exodus to Sierra Leone, Hartshorne was again instrumental in provisioning Black refugees – this time, those of the War of 1812 who settled in the area of Preston, near Halifax.
[16] Hartshorne & Tremain, Acct of Indian Meal supplied by them to Indians, 1801–1803, NSA, RG-1, v. 430, no. 133–34; Hartshorne & Boggs, Acct of power, shott & Guns &c supplyed Indians, 1800–1801, NSA, RG-1, v. 430, no. 36; Hartshorne & Boggs, Acct of Powder, Shott &c for Indians, 1802–1803, NSA, RG-1, v. 430, no. 135; Hartshorne & Boggs, for Sundries supplied the Indians by Order of His Excellency Governor Wentworth, 1807–1808, NSA, RG-1, v. 430, no. 146; Hartshorne & Tremain, Sundries supplied the Indians, 1808, NSA, RG-1, v. 430, no. 147.
[17] Thomas Peace, The Slow Rush of Colonization: Spaces of Power in the Maritime Peninsula, 1680–1790 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2023); William Wicken, The Colonization of Mi’kmaw Memory and History, 1794–1928: The King v. Gabriel Sylliboy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012); John Reid, “Empire, the Maritime Colonies, and the Supplanting of Mi’kma’ki/Wulstukwik, 1780–1820,” Acadiensis 38, no. 2 (Summer/Autumn 2009): 78–97; Julian Gwyn, “The Mi’kmaq, Poor Settlers, and the Nova Scotia Fur Trade, 1783–1853,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 14, no. 1 (2003): 65–91.
[18] Anne O'Brien, Philanthropy and Settler Colonialism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
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