Alice Curwen

Alice Curwen (c. 1619–1679) was an English Quaker missionary, who wrote an autobiography published, along with correspondence, as part of A Relation of the Labour, Travail and Suffering of that Faithful Servant of the Lord, Alice Curwen(1680). Her maiden name and parentage are unknown. She came from Baycliff in the Furness district of Lancashire (now in the South Lakeland district of Cumbria), and spent part of her life as a missionary and social activist in New England and the Caribbean.

Alice married about 1641 Thomas Curwen, also born in Baycliff. The couple joined the Religious Society of Friends in about 1652, during a mission to Furness by George Fox. Thomas was among 27 Friends from Furness and elsewhere in Lancashire who were prosecuted several times for interrupting priests and addressing their congregations. He was arrested in 1659 and imprisoned in Lancaster Castle for failing to pay parish tithes and seemingly on later occasions as well. Altogether, he stated in A Relation..., he spent eleven years in prison.

Alice Curwen, who had also emerged as a Quaker preacher, felt inspired by God in 1676, after her children had grown up, to travel to New England, having heard that Quakers were suffering cruel punishment and even the death penalty in Boston. Her husband initially disputed that the command had come from God, but relented and accompanied her.

During the next two years the Curwens were also active in Rhode Island and New Jersey. Furthermore, they spent the period March to October 1677 proselytizing in Barbados, where Alice Curwen argued that black slaves had a right to attend Quaker meetings irrespective of the opinions of their owners.

The Curwens also visited the nearby island of Nevis, where vestiges of Quakerism were reported in 1817 among slaves long after all white Quakers had left. The group, known as Naohites, used the Quaker term "first-day" for Sunday, rejected payment for preachers, forbade gaudy dress, debt, stealing, lying and swearing, and emphasized that the Spirit puts into people's hearts what they should do.

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