Amy Post

Isaac and Amy Post, were radical Hicksite Quakers from Rochester, New York, involved in the struggles for abolitionism and women's rights. Among the first believers in Spiritualism, they helped to associate the young religious movement with the political ideas of the mid-nineteenth-century reform movement.

Amy Post was born Amy Kirby on December 20, 1802, in Jericho, New York, to Joseph Kirby and Mary (Seaman) Kirby, members of the Society of Friends, also known as Quakers. The importance of humanitarian reform was embedded in Amy's early education and was the foundation for her later work as both an abolitionist and women’s-rights activist.

Isaac Post was born February 26, 1798, of Long Island, New York, Quaker families. Around 1821, Isaac Post married Amy's elder sister, Hannah Kirby. In 1823 they moved to Cayuga County, New York, where he established a farm. In 1827 Hannah fell ill, and Amy joined the Posts to help care for her sister’s two children. Hannah soon died, and Amy stayed on with Isaac to continue caring for the children. In 1828 Amy Kirby married Isaac Post, with whom she had four children: Jacob, Joseph, Matilda, and Willet.

That same year, radical Quakers split from the denomination, and Isaac Post and Amy Kirby joined the more radical wing, headed by Elias Hicks.

After Isaac and Amy married, they moved to Rochester in 1836, where they lived on North Plymouth Avenue. In 1839, Isaac went into business as a druggist, in the Smith Arcade on Exchange Street.

The couple quickly became involved in radical causes. Amy Post became an active and visible member of the Genesee Yearly Meeting of Hicksite Friends (GYM). Post, alongside her husband Isaac, dedicated much of her time to a very progressive group of Quakers who sought to give both men and women the same rights during the meetings of the Society of Friends. In 1837, Amy Post went against the desires of the Society of Friends elders, who disapproved of slavery but distrusted radical abolitionism, and signed her first “worldly” petition against slavery. In 1842, Amy and Isaac Post became two of the founders of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society (WNYASS). WNYASS was not an abolitionist group only for Quakers. Among its members were evangelical Protestants and deists as well. As an officer of the society, it was Amy Post’s duty to organize fundraising fairs and group conventions. Despite the fact that the Society of Friends was a firmly anti-slavery group, the elders of the Rochester Monthly Meeting (RMM) accused Post of being too worldly in her efforts of trying to abolish slavery. Post disregarded the RMM’s investigations of her “worldly” efforts and continued to be a Quaker abolitionist. She even continued distributing religious testimonies on the American Anti-Slavery Society’s official letterhead. For the Posts there should be no boundary between the religious beliefs of a Quaker and political activism of an abolitionist.

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