Hannah Barnard, an American Quaker in London, 1802
Trial in America Bibliography and timeline Hannah Barnard was a remarkable, doughty and devout Quaker who, in 1797, was a minister of the Hudson Monthly Meeting in New York. When she proposed to travel to meet Friends in the British Isles the Meeting gave her, as the custom was, a ‘travelling minute’, endorsed by the Quarterly and the New York Yearly Meetings. In 1798 she landed at Falmouth and visited meetings in Cornwall and the South-West. From this experience she saw the value of sharing faith and meeting houses with members of other denominations, not least Methodists. In London, at the 1799 Yearly Meeting, supported by a delegation of women Friends, she argued so tenaciously for the proposal to allow shared buildings that she was instructed to leave the meeting. She travelled to Ireland where, unsurprisingly, Friends struggled with themes of violence and social order. More comfortable Friends cited the primacy of law and order; others, suffering and injustice. Questions coalesced