Memorials to Benjamin Lay
This portrait of Benjamin Lay was painted by William Williams, Sr., c. 1750-1758. It is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. A hand-sketched replica is on display in the John Barnes Room at Abington Friends Meetinghouse. The basket of fruit in the foreground is a reference to his being a vegetarian. The exhibition label at the National Portrait Gallery reads:
Born Colchester, England
Although small in stature, Quaker reformer Benjamin Lay loomed large in the emerging eighteenth century antislavery movement. Having witnessed the horrors of slavery as a merchant in Barbados, Lay dedicated himself to abolitionism. In 1731, he set out for Pennsylvania, where he resumed his campaign against slavery, writing pamphlets and speaking out at Quaker meetings. At the time, members of the Religious Society of Friends, as Quakers are formally known, enslaved people and participated in the slave trade.
Benjamin Franklin’s wife, Deborah, owned this portrait of Lay. Although Franklin was an enslaver, his printing shop had published Lay’s abolitionist tract “All Slave-keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates,” in 1738. Here, Lay stands before his cave-like home, holding a treatise “on happiness” by the English Quaker philosopher Thomas Tryon. Shortly before Lay’s death, the Philadelphia Society of Friends passed a resolution expelling members who traded enslaved people.
On Saturday, September 22, 2018, a state Historical Marker was unveiled along Meetinghouse Road, in front of our meetinghouse, in honor of Benjamin Lay. The application and payment for the marker was generously made by M. Kelly Tillery, a Philadelphia attorney who has a great interest in Benjamin Lay. The application was granted by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
On Saturday, April 21, 2018, Abington Monthly Meeting unveiled a Grave Marker for Sarah & Benjamin Lay in our historic graveyard. The unveiling was followed by gathering in the meetinghouse in the manner of a Friends Memorial Meeting, with a dramatic reading of Benjamin Lay’s writing, presented by theater artist Benjamin Lloyd, and a panel discussion about what social concerns we need to see more clearly today, if we are to follow Benjamin Lay’s example of activism.